HandmeDowns
by Fox in the Stars
Summary: In the summer following Voldemort's return, the OotP begins work on the Black House, but Sirius's childhood home takes a terrible toll on him, and it's left to Lupin to stand up for his friend, even to his allies. post GoF AU, ambiguous puppy'shipping.
1. Chapter 1, work begins

Notes to start with: this story takes place in the summer before year 5, but please note it's an AU diverging at that point—yes, I'm a book 5 atheist, but I do my best not to write cheap denial fic. ; Some elements of book 5 will stay, but continuity problems with "Order of the Phoenix" weren't an issue to me. You can point them out if it makes you feel better, but don't expect me to "fix" them. However, I think the AU element is really not in-your-face at all here, and I think if you read on, you won't have any trouble just relaxing into it. Hope you enjoy!

HandmeDowns

Harry Potter FanFiction

by Fox in the Stars

Only a few rays of late-morning light struggled into the kitchen through the grimy, high-set windows. The wooden table was illuminated by several levitating crystal glasses—scavenged from the cupboards—full of magic flames. Alastor Moody, Molly Weasley, Remus Lupin, and Sirius Black were sitting, taking a moment to collect their thoughts after a first survey of the old Black House at No. 12 Grimmauld Place. The glasses of fire and the warm tea kettle managed to cast a homely glow around the four of them, but the rest of the room was a dim, musty shambles—to say nothing of the rest of the house.

"The first trick is knowing where to even start," Moody said.

Molly poured hot water over the tea-bags in three cups; Moody would only drink from the flask that never left his person. "I know," she said. "Did you see the drawing room? Good gracious, I never saw a place in such a state..."

"I knew it would be bad," Sirius admitted.

"But still, it's ideal in so many ways," Lupin reminded him. "Unplottable, I think I felt an Unwelcoming charm on the door as we came in..."

Moody nodded. "Something sure reacted when you told us to come on inside."

"It needs a lot of work, yes, but once it's in order, it'll be an excellent headquarters."

"I hope so," Sirius said with a weary smile.

"We'll just have to stay on our guard—and watch that house-elf," Moody said.

"Where is he, anyway?"

Alastor's eye swivelled in all directions, scanning the house. "Couple floors up, a little over that way," he said, pointing in the air.

"Mum and Dad's bedroom, most likely," Sirius said.

"We should think about what we want to be able to do here first," Remus suggested. "That will tell us where to start cleaning." He uncovered his teacup, fished out the bag, and put it on the saucer, which he pushed to the middle of the table. "If you could all save the tea-bags—"

"I thought I'd broken you of that," Sirius said, raising an eyebrow.

"Not to drink, don't worry," Lupin said. When Sirius had begun staying with him at the start of the summer, he'd been so used to poverty that he would keep re-using each tea-bag until the paper fell apart. Sirius had insisted that he break the habit, even threatening to buy him a barrel full of embarassingly expensive imported tea leaves if he didn't let one go after two cups. "I thought I'd write out some protection charms as talismans for the house," he explained, "and the more manual effort put into that kind of thing, the stronger the effect. I can boil them down for ink."

"Good thinking!" Moody agreed. "Make it yourself and you _know_ no one's done anything to jinx it, and if you've all drunk the tea and are fine, fairly sure it's safe."

"Drinking tea to make sure the dregs are safe?" Sirius questioned wryly as he took a sip.

"The first thing we'll want is a place to hold meetings," Molly said, getting them back on track.

"I think here in the kitchen would be best," Lupin suggested. "Getting it to the point that we can cook and have meals would help, as well."

"I'd like to have somewhere safe for Harry to come as soon as we can," Sirius added, and pretended not to notice Mrs. Weasley's stare. "He seemed to want to move in with me as soon as he could, and that was over a year ago..."

Molly hesitated. "I don't know what Albus would think about that. He always says Harry's best protected there, with family..."

"Well, I'm family, aren't I? Probably moreso than those...!" Sirius must have noticed Remus's mouth tighten slightly, because he let the impending insult die on his tongue. "Albus needs to remember who Harry's godfather is. It isn't him."

The four of them sat in awkward silence for a moment. Molly's brows and lips screwed up as if she were biting her tongue.

"It _would_ be best to prepare a room here where we could board people." Lupin finally spoke, gently angling for a compromise. "I'd hardly feel safe about that now, and it isn't so useful to have a house no one can sleep in."

"We can take my old bedroom for that," Sirius said.

"I was going to suggest starting there," Moody said, only one eye toward the conversation; the others had long since stopped thinking it strange when the "mad eye" roved in all directions. "Easiest place to get clean. Could tell when I walked in there, you pulled a whole different air than the rest of the house."

"Thank you, that's the best compliment I've gotten in a long time," he said with a grin. "...We'll have to clean out the attic for Buckbeak, too, probably not as hard..."

"Attic and kitchen won't be hard, as this place goes," Alastor agreed, "parts of the house the family wouldn't have gone in much..." His second pupil came back to the fore. "Kreacher's coming down the stairs."

Quiet fell over the table again for a long moment. Remus had just finished his tea when the house-elf's angry muttering came into earshot from the stairway. There was a slight rustle, and then a terrible shriek split the air— "**_SIRIUS LUCIEN BLACK!_**"

Sirius slammed his cup down, splashing the last of his tea onto the table, and clapped his hands over his ears. "_I am going to tell him not set her off!_" he shouted over the din of his mother's portrait holding forth.

"_SHAME OF MY FLESH! STAIN ON MY NAME! **YOUR FATHER DIED OF DISGRACE!** . . ._"

* * *

"_Incendio._" At the word from Lupin, the fireplace in Sirius' childhood bedroom crackled to life, now that he'd thoroughly checked it for any curse or magical trap and deemed it safe. Its glow turned the whole room shades of gold, finally drowning out the weak gray light from the open doorway. 

Remus stood up from the fire in his knit vest and his shirtsleeves, which were rolled up enough to show scabs on his forearms from the last full moon, but no need to hide them from anyone here. His old, much-mended robe hung on the upper corner of the door. So many years of his life were in that robe, it would have some effectiveness there as a sentry if any of the house's curses or creatures came to attack, and in a more mundane way, it would also interfere with the latch if any dark magic tried to lock them inside the room.

He had volunteered to help here; with this room potentially full of objects with old sentimental ties, Sirius would surely be better off having a friend helping him with the task. Meanwhile, Molly and Alastor had said they would start work on the kitchen, although Lupin thought he'd heard Alastor's wooden leg thumping through the floor below, making more sweeps through the house. Molly surely had her own idea how the kitchen should come together; Remus was ashamed to think so, but he didn't blame Moody if he preferred to stay out of her way.

"What do you think, just throw these out?" Sirius asked, piling up the linens he'd pulled off the bed. Wanting to make this room as secure as possible, they'd decided it would be best to strip it completely and start over from the bare walls, but the only safe way to do it was to go through everything as it was discarded.

Lupin nodded. "Just pile them for now. I'd rather play safe and not move them out of the room, in case that would set anything off. Better to burn them in here, but I'll make up the fire specially later, with matches..."

"Always do things the hard way, eh? Like Arabella always taught us."

"It's the best way, and this is no place to cut corners. Especially not if Harry will be moving in."

"He probably won't be. Wise Old Headmaster Dumbledore knows what's best," Sirius said, giving his mouth a sarcastic twist. "But a godfather should say his peace at any rate."

Lupin paused before answering; disagreements over Harry were something he didn't want to be in the middle of, especially when Dumbledore came into it. Although he tried his best to avoid voicing a judgement, in his heart he generally took Sirius's side. Maybe he was showing favoritism to the best friend who had practically returned from the dead for him, but sometimes he wondered if anyone else could see how important Harry was to Sirius, how seriously he took being a godfather... "Everyone just wants what's best for him," he said at last. That could hardly be impolitic.

"The bookshelf could be tricky. I'd better handle it."

"I'm right here if you need a hand," Sirius answered, turning from the now-bare bed and training his wand at the wardrobe. "Brace yourself... _Alohomora!_" The wardrobe sprang open, but thankfully nothing came out except a swirl of dust.

Lupin started toward the bookshelf but paused as his robe rustled in the doorway. A small, shrivelled figure slunk into the room—the manor's lone remaining house-elf. "Hello, Kreacher."

Kreacher cast only a disdainful sniff in his direction and began muttering as if to himself, although he was obviously quite aware of Lupin and Sirius. "Trashy people Young Master brings here, drags all manner of scum through My Lady's house... This one smells like halfblood mongrel such as ought not talk to even My Lady's lowest servant, Kreacher..."

"Can I help you?" Sirius asked bitingly.

"Can he help. Young Master wants to know if he can help Kreacher. Young Master could help if he—"

"Don't say it!" Sirius cut him off.

Remus had to assure himself that Kreacher's "mongrel" epithet was surely just for the mixed-blood implication, but he happily noted that talking like a house-elf's master didn't come naturally to his friend. Pragmatically, he knew it could present a problem if Sirius had to give Kreacher an order and reflexively began with a "will you?" or ended with a "won't you?" that deflected the obligation it was supposed to impose, but he still preferred not to see Sirius immediately casting unsoftened, totally unambiguous orders on a being with no choice but to obey.

A picture frame lay on the floor in front of the bookshelf, face-down in the shards of its own glass. As Remus knelt to pick it up, Kreacher shuffled toward him and began to reach for it instead.

"Just leave us alone," Sirius said. "Go... go move everything in the attic to the upstairs sitting room." The house-elf glared at him and grudgingly walked away, still muttering.

Lupin was just getting back to his task when a _phumph_ sound made him look up. Kreacher had pulled his robe off the door on the way out and was dragging it away.

"...Get rid of shameful gutter trash, filthy mongrel stink..."

"Stop it!" Sirius barked, striding after the dragging hem as it disappeared into the hallway. "Give that to me! Do you _want_ clothes? Is that it?"

"No, no, Kreacher must stay," came his voice through the doorway. "Kreacher must stay as Young Master's servant and not tell where is Young Master who is sentenced to Dementor's Kiss and has friends who keep secrets..."

"Oh, there are ways around that. 'Young Master' and some of his 'friends who keep secrets' could cast such a memory charm as no one would ever get my happy homecoming back out from. Or do you doubt it?"

"Kreacher must stay! Must must stay!" he insisted, now more desperate. "Ancient and Most Noble House of Black has never in many hundred years dismissed a house-elf! Never, never...! Kreacher must never leave My Lady's house...!" The house-elf's voice faded down the hallway, still ranting.

Sirius returned with the shabby robe and gave a hot sigh, but then a lighter mood seemed to come over him. As he hung it back up on the door he inhaled deeply from it and smiled.

Remus cocked his head.

"Seems 'filthy halfblood mongrels' smell like tea and chocolate, mainly."

He chuckled as Sirius went back to the wardrobe, but when he finally picked up the picture frame, his smile fell. It held a photo of himself and Sirius at the end of their first year at Hogwarts, together with James Potter and Peter Pettigrew as always—all four of the first-year Gryffindor boys. It was a warm memory of posing for Arabella to take the picture: how he'd struggled to hold his playful white cat, how James had knocked Peter's hat forward over his face just as the flash of purple smoke went off... But Sirius's relatives had altered the moving figures in this print in a very mean-spirited way. He took it out of the frame and folded it several times, image to the inside, before tucking it in his pocket. They would definitely have to burn it, but he determined to make sure Sirius didn't see it first.

"I might have guessed this," Sirius said from the wardrobe. He'd produced the black pointed hat from his old school uniform, and Remus could see the stray threads sticking out where the sewn-in points of red and gold cloth had been ripped from the hatband. "Everything 'Gryffindor' they got rid of: my ties, my scarves..." He looked at the hat wistfully for a moment before tossing it at the pile of items to be burned and pulling out his old school robes to throw on the heap as well. From the level of his shoulders, they only hung to his knees now; he hadn't lived in this room or this house since he'd been thirteen years old, over twenty years ago. He reached back into the wardrobe. "Oh, dear Morgan..."

Lupin decided that the bookshelf could wait and walked over to Sirius; better to focus on helping sort through the clothes and all the thoughts and memories they were bringing up. After all, that was a kind of magic, too, subtler but deeper.

Sirius had pulled out a sheeny dark purple robe with geometric patterns of couched gold braid all over it and pale green ruffles at the neck and sleeves—a tasteless relic of shifting high-society fashion. "I remember them dressing me up in this for social parties... Mum picked it out, I assure you. Are you sure we can't throw this in the fireplace right now?"

Remus took it. "I'll tuck it under the linens where no one has to look at it."

"At least not until they get to watch it burn. The rest aren't so bad..."

One by one, Sirius took out an assortment of more tasteful robes, shirts, and trousers; all were now quite dusty and mind-bogglingly small, but in good condition. Remus recognized some as the clothes Sirius had worn outside of class their first two school years, the things he'd picked for himself. They showed fine fabrics and tailoring, but tended toward elegant simplicity of design: a plain white shirt with a standing collar; a dusky purple robe with one black stripe all the way down the front and back from the top of the left shoulder; another robe in grey-faded black broken only by the wide, straight sleeve-cuffs, which age had mellowed from the original bright scarlet... He could remember Sirius waking him for some night-time adventure through Hogwarts' cold hallways in wintertime, how in the darkness, all that could really be seen of him was his face atop the red-and-gold Gryffindor scarf and his hands framed by those scarlet cuffs.

"Will you have any regrets about burning any of these?" Remus asked.

"No reason to. Assuming we could exorcise _this house_ out of them, even all of Arthur and Molly's kids have outgrown them. Although..." He pulled out another robe in smartly-tailored velvet, held it up against his shoulder, and picked at the ragged, shapeless garment he was wearing for contrast. "I do wish I could just walk into Madam Malkin's."

"I hope someday soon," Lupin said sadly. Sirius had never been what he would call vain, but back in the old days, before Azkaban, he had been very handsome and confidently aware of it. Never fussy or showy about clothes, but always with a naturally keen eye for what became him, he had enjoyed looking good. In the past two years as a fugitive, however, he'd been surviving in these rough prison robes the color of a soot-stain, and his black hair—always handsome as silk in his youth—was an overgrown mess. This was the first time he had heard Sirius complain, but he felt certain that his friend was bothered by it.

Of course, Remus couldn't give him anything better; the clothes he was wearing, his robe on the door, and one threadbare night-robe were all the clothes he had. They couldn't have Sirius leave a trail by using his own money, and Lupin was so poor that he would look half-suspicious even turning up to buy something nice to wear—he'd sacrificed his Wolfsbane Potion this past month just to afford feeding another person and a hippogriff.

Unfortunately, that had meant letting the Ministry put him up in one of their tiny "safe confinement" cells, leaving Sirius with Arabella, and leaving the poor old lady to explain to his friend where he'd disappeared to. Sirius had of course been enraged, but by the time Remus got back, a few days had passed and he was in too sorry a state to shout at very much. He felt guilty for putting Arabella between himself and his just punishment, but supposed with a little smile that he still had some of the old schemer in him after all.

Sirius tossed the last of his old robes onto the growing pile to empty the main compartment of the wardrobe, but when he reached for the top drawer, it gave a rattle. "Ah, looks like we've got something living in here."

"Anything unusual about that drawer?"

"I used to hide things in it that I didn't want Mum to find—enchanted it so that no one could see what was inside or reach in and get it; you had to pull the drawer out and dump it. A boggart got in there, most likely, attracted to the spell."

"I can get it out, then."

"Let's save it for a while; it might just leave now that we've made some commotion. There's something else I'd like to look at."

Sirius led the way out of the bedroom and Remus followed, taking his robe as he passed it and carrying it over his arm. When they'd gone through the house, they'd left all the doors standing open, but in this hallway, Kreacher had made a point to shut some of them again, including the one Sirius walked down and across the to. "Ready?"

Lupin nodded; both of them trained their wands at the door.

"_Alohomora_." The door swung open in hauntingly well-oiled silence to reveal the master bedroom. Nothing came out at them, but both kept their wands at the ready; this was the only well-kept room in the house, and therefore the most unnerving room by far. When they'd first opened it that morning and Alastor had seen everything clean and polished, he'd been so suspicious that he had taken out his magical eye, rolled it across the floor into the room ahead of him, and held everyone far back from the doorway until he was satisfied with what it saw. Kreacher had obviously been fastidious about his "Lady's" bedchamber even as he let the rest of the house go to ruin, which might be explanation enough, but all were staying on the alert for something more sinister.

Lupin again hung his robe on the door and left it open as Sirius crossed the room warily, around the huge, silk-dressed canopy bed to the opposite corner where one of the room's two wardrobes stood, tall and made of fine, elaborately carved mahogany. The rich, nearly-black red finish and the silver fittings shone from careful polish, but the doors weren't latched; one of them stood just slightly ajar.

"Be careful," Remus warned as Sirius approached it. He stood off the corner of the bed, keeping a clear path from Sirius to himself and from himself to the door.

"I see it." Very carefully, he opened the wardrobe and slid the hangers across the bar one by one, checking each garment. They were all fine men's robes, from the same era as the ghastly purple-with-ruffles in Sirius's room, but they'd been chosen to give a more stately air and thus were in styles that had weathered the years more gracefully. Obviously no expense had been spared on even one of them; all were silk or velvet with elaborate embroidery, handmade lace, or the like.

"Your father's clothes?"

Sirius nodded.

"You're not thinking of putting any of those on...?"

"I'm thinking of having Alastor run them through the full gauntlet. If there's anything left when he's done, then I might think about putting that on." He cast Lupin a look as if to say "What else am I supposed to do?"

"If he'll let you, I won't argue."

Still moving warily, Sirius took the robes from the wardrobe and lay them out in view on the bed. "Come on, Moony. Let's take care of that boggart."

They returned to Sirius's bedroom, Lupin again taking his robe and hanging it on the door as they entered.

"I just thought," Sirius said, "there's probably room for the Castle in here."

"Yes, I believe so." Lupin's house—Sirius had taken to calling it his 'Castle in the Sky'—was a dented, decades-old pipe tobacco tin he carried in his pocket, a lucky find that had fallen into a Muggle junk shop. No matter how many times the tin was opened, it always had exactly one match inside, and, Remus had thought at the time, why call in the Ministry to de-enchant it and Obliviate the hapless shopkeeper when he could quietly buy it and have matches forever for fifteen pence? Better yet, it had turned out that when the match was struck and dropped inside, the tin would transform into a cabin which he'd lived in ever since, but even at its full size it would easily fit inside this bedroom.

"How safe would we be if we set it up in here for the night?"

"Safe enough, I should think."

As Lupin crossed to the wardrobe, Sirius followed behind him, wand ready to assist. No matter how many times Remus faced a boggart and saw it turn into a full moon, and no matter how surely he knew that it was harmless, it always gave him a chill. It was as if it touched something even deeper and worse than the fear of his horrible transformations, something he had never quite had the courage to pursue and identify. Still, for him it was easily manageable. Over the years, he'd thought of dozens of amusing circular things to turn it into, and he didn't want to think about what Sirius's worst fear might look like.

He pulled the drawer open and sure enough, a silvery orb popped out of it and hovered in the air before his eyes. It gave him that old shudder, but he'd felt that many times before and still done what was to be done... "_Riddikulus._"

The boggart transformed into a fat white hamster running in a floating wheel. Whimsical, but not truly funny...

"_Riddikulus!_"

At the sight of the hamster in a shock-pink mohican, Sirius burst out laughing, and the boggart exploded in a puff of smoke.

* * *

To be continued... 


	2. Chapter 2, peace within the ranks

Remus was niggled awake by the sound of scratching on the outside of the cabin, just inches from his ear and conducting loudly through the wooden wall. As he woke up and lifted his head, he heard a strain of dark muttering.

"'Ts Kreacher..." Sirius slurred, mostly asleep and only inches from Remus's other ear. "Jss go bacto sleep..."

Lupin had to wake himself enough to remember for certain that Kreacher couldn't get in or damage the house, and turned over so that his head wasn't touching the wall, very carefully. A single twin-size bed took up fully half the cabin's seven-foot square of floor space, with just enough room left for the door and the small potbellied stove. All their efforts to magically expand the bed within the already-enchanted space had failed, and Sirius had been even more scandalized at Lupin's offer to sleep on the floor than he'd been about the tea-bags, so in the end they had both been squeezed into a bed made for one person. Like every morning since, Remus was nestled between Sirius and the wall, but this time it was hard finding a place to lay his head that would miss both Kreacher's voice on one side and on the other his friend's tendency to drool in his sleep just as in dog form.

He settled in again and it seemed as if he had just begun to drift off when he heard more sounds outside—footsteps too heavy to be a house-elf. Molly Weasley's voice came bright and loud amid three hard raps on the door. "_Rise and shine!_"

"AUGH!" Sirius woke with a shock and tumbled directly onto the floor, taking the pile of well-worn quilts and crocheted throws with him.

"Okay in there?"

"DON'T DO THAT TO ME!"

"We're fine," Remus called.

There was another person outside. "...Really, Mum, no way to wake somebody who's been chased across half the earth by..."

Lupin thought he recognized the voice. "Bill?"

"Yeah, I came with Mum. Charlie's here too, said he'd get the attic around for Bucky."

"Oh, good," Sirius said as he picked himself up.

"We've got the firewood you wanted," Molly said. "There's some in the kitchen and I'm leaving some by the fireplace here..."

"Thank you," Remus answered.

"And I brought more tea, and eggs and toast and—"

"There's breakfast in the kitchen is what she's saying," Bill interrupted to translate.

"We'll be down presently." Lupin edged around Sirius, who had gotten the comb from the single shelf above the stove and begun attacking his hair—he had slept in his prison robes and had nothing else to change into now. "If you'll go ahead..." Remus began as he found his wand and conjured a basin of water.

"Of course." Sirius slipped out the door before he even had to finish. As Lupin cleaned up and dressed, he could hear him talking to Bill Weasley.

"...Got some time off from my desk-job, so I thought I could do a little freelance curse-breaking for you..."

"This place needs it."

Moody's voice came, fainter from distance. He seemed to be saying something about the robes Sirius had asked him to look at.

"Sure, I'll have a look," Bill said.

"Much obliged to you for doing that," Sirius called.

"Has to be done anyway," was the answer Remus thought he heard.

Once he'd dressed and tied back his hair, Lupin waited for the others to leave the room before stepping outside his house and jiggling the doorknob a little. The Castle shrank up into his hand, back in the shape of the tobacco tin. He draped his robe on the bedroom door again and pushed it almost closed, then loaded the fireplace with the wood Molly had brought, took the defaced photo from their school days out of his pocket, and tucked it between the logs. With a match from the house-tin and a page torn from one of the books they'd cleaned off the bookshelf, he started the hearth-fire and watched it until the photograph had been safely destroyed. Settling on his knees where he could stretch and reach both the fireplace and the pile of items to burn, he sighed and began lighting the books one by one—a horrible thing to have to do, because books could hold so much that was good, but in this house they could hold just as much that was dark and dangerous and were too great a risk to spare them.

The fire was crackling merrily amid black flakes of charred paper when Sirius's voice came from the hallway, calling to someone Lupin couldn't hear. "I'm here, third floor! Try it!" There came a long squeal of unoiled metal, a little clattering. "...Yes, I got it; it just doesn't sound pretty—and the bell's not—! ... All right, I'll be there in a second!"

He whisked into the room with a tea-tray and set it on the floor next to Remus. "We're trying the dumbwaiters, so sniff this before you drink it," he said quickly before going out to the other end of the hall. "All right, send it up!" This one creaked and shuddered even more horribly than the other, but finally Sirius called down the shaft, "I got it! Now to make sure the trip didn't poison any of it!"

Lupin poured a cup of tea and checked it with a malice detection spell, then smelled the steam and took one careful sip before adding milk and sugar and drinking it. "Very well, I can be the canary over your cauldron," he joked mildly as Sirius came in with another tray for him, this one loaded with buttered toast, poached eggs, and sliced oranges.

"It would really be more useful if you'd let on _without_ falling dead," Sirius quipped back.

"You suppose _you_ think so," Remus said as he cut up the eggs with the edge of his spoon and arranged them on a slice of toast.

"You joke now, but I know you. You're just the type who'd think of breaking a curse the hard way, and so help me, I'd never speak to you again..."

Remus had to admit that his friend was at least partly right. He did remember something most wizards seemed to forget: that no curse, no matter how powerful, could survive a person willingly giving their life to break it. However, he thought it was mostly an academic point, something a Defense Against the Dark Arts professor should have filed away. It certainly wasn't how he intended to die; in fact there was no way of dying that he had any intention of.

Sirius went back to the door and called toward the master bedroom. "If either of you want tea, there's—"

**_WHOOM!_**

Even just seeing a patch of the hallway outside the room, Remus recognized the sound and flash from a great plume of flame, and he started up.

"Everyone all right in there?" Sirius shouted.

"Didn't like the way that lace was sticking up at me!" Alastor answered. Remus settled down again.

"Ah. Good work. We have tea in here if either of you want it."

"Actually, I, ah... Think I'll see if Mum could use a hand in the kitchen," Bill said; his footsteps could be heard starting toward the staircase.

Sirius came back into the bedroom and crossed behind Lupin. "Speaking of things not to like..." He shuffled through the pile of condemned clothes and linens until he found the hideous purple dress robe, which he balled up and tossed into the fireplace with a gleeful grin. Remus couldn't help but smile himself as it caught.

"There's a pile of tea-bags in the kitchen, and Molly said she fired up the stove by hand, if you want to do that while it's still hot," Sirius told him. "Since we went to all the trouble to check that they were—"

Suddenly Mrs. Black's voice tore through the house. "**_SIRIUS LUCIEN BLACK! _**_THROWING MY NOBLE HOUSE TO COMMON BLOOD-TRAITOROUS SWINE! DISGRACE TO YOUR BLOOD! MURDERER OF YOUR FATHER! **YOUR MOTHER'S ETERNAL SHAME!** . . ._" Bill must have accidentally disturbed the portrait. Even two floors above her, every epithet was clearly audible.

"Couldn't she at least harp on someone else?" Sirius shouted.

"Once she quiets down, I'll go and take care of that in the kitchen," Lupin said and took the last bite of the toast.

"So after these, what about the furniture?"

"Knock it apart and put it in, too."

"The hard way, I assume. Is conjuring a sledge good enough or should I get a forge in here and make one?"

"Whichever you think best," Remus teased. "Only try not to enjoy it _too_ much."

"We're not into those rooms yet," Sirius answered with a twisted smile as he rolled up another discarded garment for the fire.

Mrs. Black's latest tirade faded into silence. Lupin swallowed the last of his tea and went down to the kitchen, leaving his robe on Sirius's bedroom door. The house was still grimy and dismal; walking through it the work needing to be done hardly seemed any less than it had been the day before. In some way, though, it was amazing how much twenty-four hours had improved it. The simple fact that six people were here now, walking through the halls, working together for a good purpose, had attacked the cold, threatening air that had been here when they arrived, and already it was beginning to seem like a house—not yet a home, but not still the labyrinth it had been.

Nonetheless he softened his steps and kept tight to the far banister on the stairs overlooking the entry hall as he passed the mounted heads of a number of house-elves—no doubt Kreacher had been correct when he insisted that the Blacks had never dismissed one. He padded carefully in a wide circle around the faded silk curtains that concealed Mrs. Black's portrait, hanging where the twin staircases crossed at the head of the entry hall, but then it was only another half-flight down to the kitchen. Molly, Bill, and Charlie were all there, and the day's work here showed even more. The fireplace and stove were going strong, and the windows had been washed to admit more sunlight, as had the crystal which was all floating in the air, full of illuminating white flames, enough that the room looked almost sunny. On Lupin's advice, Molly was performing the kitchen's initial cleaning mundanely. She had already managed to carve islands of cleanliness around the sink, stove, and table and begun working outward from there; at the moment, she was up to her elbows in the merrily-bubbling sink, working on a pile of cookware. The stone floor had also been swept, and Bill, his black leather jacket hanging on a chair, was on his knees in a corner, attacking it with a scrub-brush. Charlie, the more broad-shouldered and muscular of the two brothers, stood over the table with a pencil stub in his hand, looking at a scrap of parchment. "Hey, Remus," he greeted.

"Good morning, everyone."

"Sorry about the noise a bit ago," Bill said. "I thought I'd stuff my ears and see how hard it'd be to get her down."

"Permanent sticking charms are always hard to get off," Molly remarked.

"Not as hard as whatever's holding her up, I'll tell you that," Bill said.

"Is there anything you and Sirius will need me to get?" Charlie asked. "I had a look around the attic and it's all cleaned out."

"Sirius told Kreacher—the house-elf—to move everything out of it."

"Speaking of Kreacher," Molly interjected, "keep out of the upper cupboards here. He climbed into them this morning and it'd be better just to leave him alone. Poor thing seems awfully distressed..."

"I can imagine," Lupin said. "His family's house is suddenly full of strangers, but what can we do?" The tea-kettle issued gentle wisps of steam, and he moved it to the stove to bring it to a harder boil.

"Anyway," Charlie started again, "I'm hopping out for some bedding, and I'll need something to reinforce one of the beams up there enough to tether him, so if there's anything you need, may as well get it while I'm out."

He stroked his chin. "Once the room is empty, we can probably just conjure any tools we'll need to get the wallpaper off... We will need paint, though, and just as well to buy brushes... Blue, be sure to get some bright sky blue paint."

"Wards off the evil eye," Bill concurred; as a curse-breaker he'd surely seen many ancient relics using blue for that reason.

"Oh, that's just superstition!" his mother chided.

"Even if it is, the intent is the thing," Lupin said. He took a saucepan from the pile that Molly had washed and put the heap of used tea-bags into it, pressing them into a flat layer at the bottom.

"...'Bright sky blue'..." Charlie repeated as he wrote it down. "Once you've stripped that room down, what are you going to use for furniture in there?"

"Oh, I don't know, really. If we could get into Sirius's Gringotts vault without looking suspicious, we could just buy some..."

"Me and Bill are looking for a flat—"

"I told you, you don't have to do that!" Molly insisted.

"Oh, Mum, let Ronnie be the big brother in the house for awhile. He doesn't need to be tripping over the two of us," Bill said.

"What I mean is, we won't need Mum and Dad to keep our stuff at the Burrow, so maybe they could spare a couple of beds," Charlie offered. "I don't know if you'd rather have new, if that would be safer or..."

"No, no, that would be wonderful, if you could—better than new. I'd be most grateful," Remus assured him. Nothing could be better for setting up a safe bedroom here than the atmosphere such a gift would bring from the Weasley home.

The kettle started bubbling noisily and puffing clouds of steam. He covered the tea-bags with boiling water and put a lid on them to steep before returning the kettle to the trivet on the table. The pan of tea-bags would just have to sit for several hours.

Charlie straightened up and took one last look over his list. "...'Grease for the dumbwaiters'... Have we got something to carry this much straw around? I hate to bring it in from the street and make a scene, but wrestling that through the Floo—"

"Ah, here." Lupin took his Castle from his pocket and offered it; Charlie already knew what it was. "If you'll take care of it and clean it up when you're finished."

"I surely will," Charlie said, taking it respectfully. "I'll be back soon!" He took a bit of Floo powder from his pocket and left through the fireplace to the Burrow amid a chorus of "Goodbye," "See you!"

Bill sat back from his scrubbing to see Charlie off, but he turned to Lupin before going back to work. "Remus, I've got to ask you something."

"Oh, Bill, don't..." his mother said.

"If you don't want to answer, that's all right," he persisted, "but that picture... What's she on about, saying Sirius killed his dad? Were they on opposite sides of the war, or...?"

"No," Lupin said. He'd been dreading having to talk about this since Mrs. Black's first outburst, as she always seemed to bring it up, but now there was nothing for it, and he sat down to speak. "Sirius's father committed suicide."

"Oh." Bill's hand started a little toward his mouth.

"It was during our sixth year in school. We were all staying over Christmas holiday when Sirius got the news," Remus explained. "_The Daily Prophet_ showed quite poor taste in their reporting about it, and by the time everyone got back, the story was everywhere..." He took a deep breath. "Supposedly the Blacks were having a holiday party, with guests from all the great pureblood families, powerful people from the ministry, et cetera, and at some point Sirius's father left the room without a word. No one thought anything of it; he hadn't given any sign at all that something was wrong, but a little while later the guests heard a loud noise from upstairs. Even before they found him, they knew he was dead. Everyone was in the drawing room with that tapestry of the whole family tree. Living people's names show up on it in gold letters, and just at that moment, his name faded from gold to black. No note, no explanation—I don't suppose anyone will ever know why he did it...

"Sirius said that his father was always very withdrawn, always a darkly silent personality... He had barely seen him in years when it happened, but his mother blamed him, said that his breaking with their pure-blood ethic had disgraced his father enough to drive him to it. I'm sure as an explanation it was only hysterical, but it was the reason Sirius was finally disowned."

"If he wants to bring Harry in here, he'll have to tell him something about that," Molly pointed out darkly.

"I'm sure Sirius will tell Harry what he has to."

An uncomfortable silence settled over the room. The only sound for several moments was the rattling and scratching of Molly scouring dishes in the sink and Bill getting back to scrubbing the floor.

Lupin started to leave, but was struck with curiosity and broke the silence again. "Not just a permanent sticking charm, you say?"

Bill shook his head. "No. I couldn't tell you exactly what she did to stick that picture up, but if it didn't involve blood, then I miss my guess."

"In other words, we're probably stuck with her."

Something shuffled in the upper cabinets.

"Maybe that's for the best," Lupin said, seeing a chance to leave on a lighter note. "I'm sure Kreacher would miss her terribly."

* * *

Charlie got back just in time for lunch, and his mother sat him down to eat before unloading the supplies he'd gotten. Everyone came down to the kitchen except Alastor, who was absorbed in examining Mr. Black's old wardrobe with his usual fanaticism and had sequestered himself in the master bedroom; other than a burst of flame that consumed another one of the robes, no one had heard from him in hours. Molly took him a tray and no one envied her the job.

While they were all seated around the table, a small bolt of silver light zipped into the room and whirled around over their heads a few times before settling on the table. It was a message from Dumbledore, saying that he would be coming to the house later that day.

After the meal, they unloaded Lupin's house, except that he left the brushes and cans of paint stacked up behind the door until they were needed. Charlie had bought all the paint in bright azure blue, which wasn't what Remus had in mind, but he had to admit it was what he'd said, and there was no harm in an all-blue room. Bill took the grease and set about tuning up the dumbwaiters, and Charlie hauled several bales of straw up to the attic, along with an assortment of lumber and scrap-metal.

Work continued in Sirius's old bedroom. Once all the books and clothes had gone into the fireplace, he and Lupin turned to the furniture and didn't know what to do with the mattress except tear it apart. Once they'd done that and chased down all the stray bits of stuffing, then came the bedframe. It was a massive old four-poster that took conjured saws to get into small enough pieces, and by the time they were finished with it, it was late afternoon and both felt very much ready for a break.

When they came out into the third floor hallway, Bill was there at one of the dumbwaiters, and Lupin walked over to him while Sirius went downstairs. As he got closer, he could see Bill's hands and shirt smudged with old black grease and dusted here and there with red rust-powder.

"Coming along well? I know the two of us in there could hear it less and less."

"I've got this one just about in shape," Bill answered. He tapped the frame of the aperture with his wand. "Fourth floor." The car made only an ordinary soft rumble as it rose swiftly and smoothly up the shaft, past them to the floor above; he even heard the bell ring up there as it arrived.

"Very good!" Remus said appreciatively.

"Thanks. Of course, I haven't even started on the other one. This one was more of a trial than I thought, and the other sounded even worse; I think I'll wait and start on it tomorrow..."

"I don't blame you a bit. We had to saw apart the old bed in there, and the bookcase will need the same. I'd certainly like to put more of that off awhile, but—" He cut off as Bill raised a hand for silence.

In the pause, a metallically-softened but almost understandable echo issued from the dumbwaiter shaft. Bill inclined his head and leaned inside it, and Remus hesitantly did the same. It put them almost nose-to-nose but they didn't look at each other; both turned their attention down the shaft, which conducted Molly and especially Sirius's voices clearly from the kitchen.

"—And Bill said we're not going to get that portrait off the wall, so if Harry comes here you'll have to tell him something, with her ranting about your father—Sirius, does he know _anything_ about your family?"

"Not yet, but he had to eventually. Good a time as any to tell him."

"Is it that simple? _Is it?_"

"Why not?"

"And I suppose it's as good a time as any to tell him about that Prophecy, too," she suggested bitterly.

"No. No one is telling him about the Prophecy, and that is flat."

"You keep saying that as if it's down to you to decide—"

"It _is!_"

"—Like you can just decide it's better to take him away from his aunt and uncle who raised him..."

"You've known him longer than I have, Molly. If you don't know _that_ by now then you're blind _and_ stupid."

Remus glanced over as a pained look crossed Bill's face.

"The point is, Harry isn't your son!"

"So what, he's yours?"

"No, just—"

"I'm his godfather! I'm the one James and Lily picked to take care of him! I suppose it's my fault I haven't been there all his life, that I got sent up with no trial?"

"Well, with you in Azkaban, you couldn't expect Albus to—"

"_Dumbledore had no right to take Harry!_"

"He just gave him to the next people in line to take care of him, that's all."

"No, he didn't." Sirius's voice suddenly took on a calm, patient tone that Remus recognized as even more dangerous than his shouting. "According to the law, a parent's wizard relatives come before Muggle relatives, even if they're just related by the Blood-Bonding Spell."

Lupin backed off slightly, but not out of the dumbwaiter shaft or out of earshot; he saw where this was going.

"So we should have handed him to Pettigrew?"

"No, we're going by the law, remember? If we weren't, I should've gotten him as the Godfather, and since we are, then by the law, Peter was dead. James and Lily still had one blood brother left." There was a long pause before he spoke again. "If you're going to say it, Molly, just say it."

Upstairs, Remus turned and started to walk away. He was aware of Bill staring after him and could still just hear Molly and Sirius...

"Just say what?"

"'Surely I wouldn't think of giving a child to a—'"

"You two do realize sound carries just lovely up these things, right?" Bill called suddenly.

A moment's pause. "**_GOOD!_**" Sirius shouted directly into the shaft loudly enough to make Bill jump back and rub his ears, then shut it on the kitchen end with a sharp hiss and slam.

On his way down the stairs Remus passed Molly on her way up; she looked unsure where she was going, and stopped awkwardly in her tracks when she saw him. "Oh, Remus, ah..."

"Excuse me, please, Molly," he said simply and pleasantly, and brushed past her. Especially given the way she looked at him now, Sirius had no doubt hit upon just what she'd been thinking—surely no one would think of giving a child into the care of a werewolf—but he was too used to worse to take offense, and in fact shared her shock to some degree.

He found Sirius alone in the kitchen, sitting at the table with a glass of water. "Hey, Moony. I take it you were listening in, too?"

No point in pretending; he nodded. "Molly does mean well, but..." he said. "Well, I only wish you'd left me out of it."

"Sorry." Sirius seemed to have more to say, but it just hung over the room for a few minutes. Remus looked at his pan of now-cold soaked teabags and started squeezing them out in silence.

"Did anyone even ask you?" Sirius finally asked.

"Dumbledore might have..." It was hard to remember; the weeks following James and Lily's deaths were all such a blur...

Sirius gave a scornful sniff. "I thought it would've been him, if anyone did."

"Was that wrong of him?"

"No, but if the usual robe from the Ministry had asked you, then you'd have had a chance to think about it. If it was Albus, on the other hand... Well, everyone knew he was your hero. If I were you, I'm sure I'd have been the same way... Not that I think he meant to take advantage, but he had to know as well as anybody that you'd agree to _anything_ he told you he'd decided..."

_You think so?_ his mind shot back, but he didn't say it. Why shouldn't Sirius think so? When Remus had said 'Dumbledore might have' asked him, it had seemed a little familiar to think that in that blurred expanse of grief, Albus might have been there, might have told him that Harry had been given to his aunt and uncle, "don't you think that's best?" And if it had happened that way, Sirius was right: he would only have nodded. That realization embarassed him, but then, Dumbledore was the one who had given him every chance he'd had to make something of his life—had let him come to school, had let him teach and even made some show of wanting to keep him on after he'd failed to keep control of his transformation. That same night, his instructions to Harry and Hermione had even saved Sirius from the Dementor's Kiss. But Sirius wasn't just being bitter...

"Do you have any trouble with Dumbledore now?" Remus asked. "That is, you're a member of the Order and he's in charge of it... Is that a problem?"

"Not to me," Sirius said. "I'm not fool enough to sabotage the Order over it, so I'll go along with whatever he decides, too, just to have peace within the ranks... I'll even promise to keep biting my tongue around the kids; disillusioning them about their Headmaster is NEWTs-level material," he joked, but not bitterly. "...But for now, I have a right to be angry and to have my say."

Lupin nodded slowly and started to make up the fire in the stove. The clatter of the wood inside it was the only sound for a long time. Despite his question, his mind was still caught on what Sirius had said before that. _"You'd agree to **anything** he told you he'd decided"..._ Surely, he thought, his respect for Dumbledore wasn't wrong, but just as surely, it would be taking it too far to give his responsibility, his will, over to anyone so easily, and he couldn't escape the accusation. Harry Potter had spent ten years being raised by Muggles who gave every appearance of hating him and took every opportunity to grind him down. What could justify that? Who was responsible? Blaming Voldemort of course was the easy way, but was it Dumbledore, who brought him to that house? Was it Crouch, who thought his godfather didn't deserve a trial? _Was it me, who stood idly by?_

He got so lost in thought that he didn't notice Sirius coming over to stand next to him until the fire had caught and he stood up to find him there.

"I'm sorry," he said. "You're right, I shouldn't be hanging this on you. You can hit me if you like."

That was just an old joke James used to use in apologies to people he knew wouldn't do it, but Remus nonetheless shook his head as he set his pan of ink-tea on the heat to boil down. "I can't argue with what you said..."

"That only means it was below the belt. Go ahead."

Won over, Remus smiled and brushed Sirius's jaw lightly with his fist. The stubble on his friend's face tickled his knuckles.

"There, that's better," Sirius said.

The bell on the working dumbwaiter jangled. Sirius crossed to it and opened its door, and Charlie Weasley's voice came clearly down the shaft. "It's Charlie. Is Sirius still down there?"

"I am."

"The attic's as ready as it's going to be; we can get Buckbeak in here tonight."

"Oh, good," Sirius answered.

"I think the best way would be to Engorge the front window—open it up and just fly him right in."

"That's what I thought; no way we'll get him up all those stairs, and it's more subtle than landing him in the street."

"Speaking of subtle, wait until it's dark?"

"Sounds fine to me," Sirius called. He turned around so that Charlie wouldn't hear him grumble "Better wait until after Albus puts in his appearance, too..."

"By the way," Lupin said, "while you're moving Buckbeak, if he should happen to—"

"Shed a feather for a quill, I know..."

"Say, does Kreacher know about this?" Charlie's voice asked. "Wouldn't want him to get hurt."

"Much," Sirius added under his breath before answering. "I'll tell him to stay out of there. Have you seen him?"

"Not since this morning."

"Last I knew, he was here in the kitchen cupboards," Lupin said, turning toward him.

Sirius whipped around and stared for a moment before shaking his head. "Kreacher, we're taking over the attic to board a hippogriff, so stay out of it from now on." He waited expectantly, but the only sounds were slight echoes from the shaft and the pan bubbling on the stove.

The dumbwaiter bell jangled again, giving him a start. "Albus is here!" came Molly's voice. "He just Apparated in."

"Oh, goody," Sirius muttered as Lupin turned to look. "Kreacher, let me know if you heard what I told you." He started to turn, but suddenly jerked around again. "_Remus!_"

Something clattered in the cabinets above the stove, and Lupin turned just in time to see a crystal punch bowl fall from them. It struck the handle of the saucepan and sent it flying before hitting the floor, and Remus jumped back with a scream of pain as he was splashed with boiling tea and shattered glass.

"**_KREACHER!_**"

Sirius charged across the room as Lupin grabbed a spare teacup and poured cold water from the sink over his burns. The broken glass had only bounced off his trousers and not cut him, but the tea had struck his left arm and shoulder, some splashing as high as his left cheek and the side of his neck. The water soothed the heat, but it still felt as if needles gripped into his skin everywhere he'd been splashed, tearing him every time he moved against his clothes.

"**_KREACHER, COME HERE!_**"

"Molly, could you bring the salve? I've burned myself," Lupin called.

"**_In Merlin's Rock you did!_**" Sirius snapped. "**_It was this little—_**"

"Young Master calls for Kreacher...?"

Sirius seized the house-elf by his leathery arms and shook him violently. "**_Don't you dare hurt any of my friends, EVER! _**_Do you hear me! If you ever do that again, I'll--- **If you ever do anything like that again, it will be the greatest disgrace this house has ever known!**_" he shouted. With that, the gravest threat that could be levelled at a house-elf, he threw Kreacher to the floor.

The door swung open and Albus Dumbledore swept into the room in a massive flourish of robes and silver hair; he seemed to bring with him a warm, calming glow, as he did everywhere he went, but here and now it might not be enough... "Sirius, please, control yourself."

"Oh, excuse me," Sirius said, his voice dangerously mock-pleasant.

Kreacher slunk past Dumbledore and out of the kitchen, glaring at Sirius all the way. "Greatest disgrace My Lady's house has ever known... Greatest disgrace..."

"**_That's right!_**"

Dumbledore frowned at him patiently. Lupin dreaded what might happen between them; he tried to take off his sweater, but the movement stung his burned skin and he gasped.

"You, sit down," Sirius barked. Crossing the room, he pulled out a chair for Remus to sit and then started to peel the sweater off him, very carefully.

"Sirius, I understand that having Kreacher here is hardly ideal," Dumbledore said, "but this is his house, also. We'll simply have to live with him, and to do that, we'll have to treat him with kindness and respect."

Sirius didn't answer; he'd gotten Remus's sweater off and begun unbuttoning his shirt.

"Sirius?"

"I heard you. Not that I think it'll help his mood any, but I have no intention of handling him the way my father would've..."

"Compared with how you handled him just now?"

"I told him not to deserve it like that again."

"_Did_ he deserve that?"

"Apparently you know enough to tell me!" Sirius snapped, just as he started to take the sleeve off Lupin's scalded arm. He accidentally tugged the fabric, at which Remus felt more of those needles lancing through his skin and gave a small cry of pain despite himself. "Sorry," Sirius whispered, and continued very carefully.

"Albus is right," Remus said. "If we antagonize him, he'll find ways to twist your words and keep doing things..."

"All right, all right..."

Lupin wouldn't have felt so self-conscious if it were only his friend seeing him like this, but Dumbledore widened his sparkling eyes and blinked at him through half-moon spectacles. Sirius taking off his shirt had revealed not only the burns, but also still-dark-red scabs where he'd torn himself as a werewolf last full moon, and his ribs; he'd spent his entire adult life so thin they showed, except when he'd lived at Hogwarts. Worse yet, Molly came into the room just then with Bill and Charlie behind her; apparently Dumbledore's arrival had even roused Alastor from his task—his wooden leg could be heard on the stairs.

Molly had the salve tin in her hand. When she came into the room she slowed up for a moment and glanced at Dumbledore, as if watching him for a sign, but didn't stop moving toward Lupin.

"Remus, are you all right?" Dumbledore asked.

"I will be."

"You're insufferable," Sirius muttered.

_At least I didn't say 'Yes, I'm fine'_, his mind answered, but the presence of the others held it back.

"Sorry I took so long; Charlie had some salve with him but it took a moment to find it," Molly said. She scooped up a great dollop on her fingers and started rubbing it on Remus's neck, not roughly but hard enough to make him tense.

Alastor came in; the Weasley brothers had paused just inside the door and had to make way for him. "What happened in here?" he asked, both eyes catching sight of Lupin.

"He was boiling down his ink; Kreacher splashed him with it," Sirius told him.

"So I'll have to start over on that," Lupin said gamely. No good to give up after this...

"Ink shouldn't be any trouble," Dumbledore said. "Is it for any special use?"

Remus found himself reluctant to answer and stayed silent.

"Writing protection charms for the house," Molly said.

"Excellent idea. I believe I have some dragon scale and copper ink I can bring you—perfect thing for it, writes a lovely iridescent green."

"That would be good, thank you," Remus said. He always loved a chance to use such fine ink, but for the intended purpose, his thanks weren't as sincere as he wished.

"The house seems to be coming along very well," Dumbledore said. "I believe you'll have that bedroom around very shortly."

"We might take a bit longer to be extra certain of it," Sirius said. He took a deep breath and continued very purposefully. "I'd like to have Harry stay there; he did say he wanted to live with me."

There was a long pause as Albus stroked his beard thoughtfully. Molly turned toward him with an almost pleading expression. In a glance around the room, Remus realized that everyone was looking toward Dumbledore except Sirius, who stared grimly into space awaiting his answer, and Moody, who was looking at Dumbledore with only his normal eye; probably the other was trained at Sirius. He himself felt an almost magnetic temptation to keep his eyes on the Headmaster—especially since his chair was aimed in that general direction and the burns made it painful to turn his head, but he decided to turn a little and look over at Sirius, who noticed and showed him a tight smile. Even when he raised his eyebrows and glanced in other directions, it was in a sarcastic expression for Remus's benefit.

"Under the circumstances..." Dumbledore said, "now that Voldemort has returned, I think that we can all agree that Harry's safety is the first priority. The most certain way to ensure that would be for him to stay at his aunt and uncle's house."

"Don't you think that's a lot of weight for Arabella to carry?" Sirius asked coolly.

"You should know that I haven't been depending solely on her efforts all these years. As long as he's with his Aunt, he's with his mother's blood, the blood that—"

"_Don't give me that!_" Sirius snapped, sending a ripple through the room. "And don't talk about Lily like some sort of stranger—she was family to me! She loved Harry so much she died to save him, and you use it as an excuse to give him to the people who had him living in a cupboard? Do you think she'd have wanted that? Do you think as her friend—her blood-brother, let alone Harry's godfather— _Do you think I'm going to stand here and listen to it?_"

Remus thought he saw Dumbledore waver just the slightest bit, almost imperceptibly. Everyone was looking at him again; the Weasleys seemed afraid to get in the middle, and Alastor backed off to observe with a more pragmatic air. Lupin felt his friend's every verbal blow at the Headmaster in his own belly, but he wasn't hoping for them to fail...

"I meant no such offense. Please, calm down."

"Maybe being calm about it all is what got us here," Sirius growled.

"What I was saying," Dumbledore pressed on, "is that in any event, the magic that protected Harry from Voldemort back then is present wherever Lily's blood is, including in his aunt..."

"But not in me?" Sirius tapped his own forehead—where someone placed a drop of their blood on the recipient of a Blood-Bonding Spell. Lupin, Sirius, James, Lily, and Peter had all cast it on each other back in their school days, and Sirius had cast it on baby Harry in taking on the role of Godfather.

"Sirius, I know that the connections you forged with the Blood-Bonding Spell mean a great deal to you—"

He gave a scornful sniff; obviously thinking 'a great deal' didn't describe it.

"—But in a situation like this, it simply isn't the same thing as—"

"So the family you're born into is what matters, is it?" The whole room seemed to hold its breath as Sirius crossed it. He stood face-to-face with Dumbledore for a barely a second, but it felt much longer. "Seems I've heard that somewhere recently," he said, then swept out the kitchen door and left it wide open as he ascended the stairs. Lupin tried to rise, but the stinging of his burns gave him pause, and Dumbledore had just started moving to follow Sirius when from the landing came the short hiss of a curtain jerked aside.

"**_SIRIUS LUCIEN BLACK! BLOOD-TRAITOR! PATRICIDE! _**_THROWING AWAY YOUR NOBLE FAMILY TO CONSORT WITH MUDBLOODS AND MONGRELS! OH, TO THINK THAT ONLY A WRETCH LIKE YOU SHOULD BE LEFT TO CARRY ON OUR NAME!_"

Remus leaned forward to rest his forehead on his hand. Bill slammed the door to muffle Mrs. Black's shrieks, but with the kitchen only a half-flight from her, it was still useless to try to discuss anything until she fell silent. When she finally did, Dumbledore only just opened his mouth before he paused at a faint crashing sound from upstairs, followed by another, and another...

"We had to knock apart the furniture in Sirius's old... The bedroom we've been working on," Remus explained.

There was a long, awkward pause.

"Well, he... I know he means well," Molly offered.

Remus sighed. Although surrounded by several of his most dear and respected allies, he suddenly felt very much alone in the room.

* * *

to be continued...

  



	3. Chapter 3, dreaming the past

Once Dumbledore began discussing the Order's plans, they talked for hours, until it was very late and the sky was full dark outside the windows; Sirius never came back down to the kitchen, not even for dinner. Molly sent a tray up the dumbwaiter, but when Albus had finally left and Lupin went upstairs, it was still there, untouched. Remus picked it up and took it to the bedroom, where he found the door fully shut. His robe had been taken down from the top corner, but brushed along the floor as he opened the door; it was hung up inside on the knob.

The room was completely bare of furniture. Sirius sat in front of the roaring fireplace with only a small pile of wooden bits left beside him. "Hey, Moony. How do you feel?"

"Better." After several hours of the salve working, the burns were much improved. "You finished all the furniture?"

Sirius nodded. "I used the Herculius Charm once; hope that didn't hurt anything."

"No," Remus assured him; he put the tray down on the floor and settled to a seat.

"Did anything interesting happen after my great scene?"

"Talk about what to do from here..." Lupin hesitated for a moment. "Albus suggested casting the Fidelius charm on this place as our headquarters."

Sirius let out a single, bitter laugh. "And he'll be the Secret-Keeper, no doubt."

"That was the suggestion, yes..." He looked over at Sirius, who gazed distantly into the fire. He'd been charged with finding out if Sirius would agree to the plan—the Fidelius charm required the participation of everyone who knew the fact to be concealed, so it couldn't be cast without Sirius's consent, and his recent air of rebelliousness caused some concern among the others. Not to Lupin; he trusted Sirius's word that he wouldn't let his feelings sabotage the Order's work, but had dreaded having to tell him. After what had happened to James and Lily—after they had turned down Dumbledore as their Secret-Keeper in favor of Sirius, only to be betrayed and killed when he passed the duty to Peter instead—for Sirius, this must feel like a slap in the face. "He's only being pragmatic," Lupin assured him.

"I know. I'll go along, don't worry. Maybe when it's done, Albus will do me a favor and not tell me where this house is. Anything else?"

"It looks as if Voldemort _is_ after the Prophecy. It's still safe for the moment, but there seems to have been a break-in at the Department of Mysteries, and with the Ministry resolutely looking away, we can't depend on them to protect it. Some of us will have to begin guarding it ourselves."

"But not me," Sirius surmised unhappily. "Getting caught there would be even slightly worse than being stuck in this house."

"Starting tomorrow, Alastor will be working on that, not here, so he's trying to finish with those robes tonight," Remus said. "After a few more days to get the house on its way, I'll be taking shifts there, also."

Sirius turned to him suddenly. "Do you think—? Can't the others handle it? You know better than I do what will happen if they catch a werewolf in there."

"It has to be done, and everyone who guards it is running a risk: six months in Azkaban. For me it would probably be longer, but... Six months or a year, maybe it doesn't make any difference. Either way it's forever."

"It would make a difference to me."

Remus showed a brief, sad smile. "Even so, I can't go avoiding everything that becomes more dangerous because... because of my condition. Except Bill and Charlie, it's too soon to be sure of any new members, and in the meantime we're rather short of hands..."

"I can see that," Sirius said. "But you ought to be reminded now and then that you don't have the monopoly on concern."

The thumps of footsteps came up the stairs and into the hallway. Charlie looked into the room. "Sirius, you want to go and get Bucky?"

"Right," he said, then got up and left with Charlie. They were already gone before Remus realized that Sirius still hadn't touched his food.

He set the tray on the mantel, tossed the last few broken bits of the furniture into the fireplace, then conjured a broom to sweep up the dust and splinters from the floor and put them in, too. With that done, he sat down in front of the fire again, waiting for it to burn itself down and for Sirius and Charlie to get back with Buckbeak. As he sat there so long in the still, quiet room, the warmth of the hearth-fire began to weigh on his eyelids. At last he gave in to temptation and lay down in front of it, slightly curled on his side.

* * *

Without opening his eyes, Remus felt a shaft of white light from the doorway pierce the almost-darkness left by the coals in the fireplace. Shadows moved across that light, tall as trees, and their voices came to him thunderous but indistinct, as if he were hearing them underwater. He was too asleep to understand what they were saying, but knew them as familiar voices. Sirius... Alastor...

"Just throw them on the floor for tonight," Sirius's voice poured over him from directly above. Remus felt a body leaning over him, something moving in his pocket, a moment of stillness and then the pop and hiss of a match... Setting up the Castle. With that realization, he let himself sink down again, let the lights and sounds flow by for what could have been a second or an hour, until he felt hands on his shoulders, lifting him up.

"Let's see if it's been long enough... _Herculio._"

Remus tried to rouse himself and say something—he didn't even know what—but only managed a drowsy "mwuh?" sound.

The tip of a wand lightly tapped his forehead. "_Morpheosa._"

Even as Sirius lifted him from the floor, he was sinking again, under soft, warm blankets of sleep that the charm brought flooding in on him. His slight hold on consciousness was swept under them and melted against his friend's shoulder.

* * *

Lupin was dreaming. He woke up in Sirius's old bedroom; his Castle in the Sky was nowhere to be seen. He found the entire room—walls, floor, and cieling—already painted in a blue so bright that the edges of the walls were lost in the flood of color and clouds actually seemed to drift across the resulting azure dome. However, all the old furniture that he and Sirius had burned was back, and it was the old bed that he rose from. He curiously peeked inside the wardrobe and found the main compartment full of nothing but school robes, red-and-gold ties and scarves, and five hats floating atop them like kites. The top drawer at the side shook impatiently, and he hastily shut the wardrobe again.

When he opened the bedroom door and looked out, Lupin found that he could see past intervening walls and cielings and into the floors below him, as into a doll house. He was looking down across the second floor balcony into the entry hall, which glowed with stately polish in the light of floating candles, even as they also threw menacing shadows around all the family portraits, who muttered darkly among themselves. A small knot of flesh and blood wizards and witches remained at the door exchanging tense pleasantries. One of the old men even wore a bejeweled sword, the old-fashioned ornament of a rich and well-born wizard patriarch. All but one, they smiled and spoke pleasantly, but flitted out the door into the night, leaving the last purple-bedecked witch standing alone to latch the door behind them. As she turned and ran wailing back up the entry hall, Lupin recognized her from her portrait—Estelle Black, Sirius's mother.

She ran up the stairs, weeping and cursing with rage, behind and beneath Lupin and through a needle's eye in the doll-house architecture to dart across the hallway beside him and into the master bedroom. He couldn't see through the door once she'd slammed it behind her, but a moment later he clearly heard her throw herself screaming upon the bed.

The floor under his feet gently swallowed him downward; his body was lost in the passage but he barely noticed. He became only a viewpoint, an invisible pair of eyes floating freely just below the drawing room ceiling. Below, the room had clearly been set for a grand society party. A buffet table stretched one long side of the room, appointed with only the finest food and drink, enough untouched that the party had obviously been cut short. The fireplaces at each end of the drawing room crackled merrily, and a huge chandelier overhead lit the room brightly as day. Lupin's floating view came to nest somewhere amid the tangled branches of the chandelier, and like a star he looked down on two boys standing below.

Even from the back, even so much younger, Lupin knew the dream-figure of Sirius the moment he saw him. He was wearing the horrible purple dress-robe that he'd been certain to burn, and the ruffles at the neck didn't quite know what to do when presented with the tapered back of his old short haircut. He stood at the buffet table, idly picking at a cluster of white grapes. Lupin recognized Sirius's now-dead younger brother, Regulus, standing behind him; the colors of his robes were perhaps more tasteful, but the design was even more dreadfully ostentatious—he was clearly dressed to be the center of attention, but now the room was silent except for the two of them and he was reduced to screaming at his brother from behind.

"It's YOUR fault to start with, and then you have to go and make a scene and RUIN EVERYTHING! You ALWAYS RUIN EVERYTHING!"

The young Sirius ate a grape and didn't seem to hear him.

"ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?" Regulus drew back a fist.

Sirius lazily took his wand from his sleeve and cast an armoring charm, then tucked it back. When Regulus threw his punch, the charm stopped his fist an inch or so short of connecting, and he cried in pain as if he'd hit a solid object. Sirius didn't seem to feel it at all; he plucked another grape and scrutinised it.

"FATHER!" Regulus screamed down the length of the room. "HE CAST A SPELL!"

"Sirius, whatever you're doing, stop."

Only at the sound of a mellow yet sonorous voice did Lupin realize that there was a third person in the room. Following Regulus's gaze, he saw Sirius's father, Orion Black, standing in front of one of the fireplaces and apparently staring at the mantelpiece. His back was to his two sons and the unseen dream-observer. With his black hair just long enough in back to hide his neck, wearing a midnight-dark velvet robe, holding his hands in front of his body, he would've looked like nothing more than a shadow if not for the golden embellishment of the sword at his hip.

"Do you want me to hit him back instead?" Sirius asked.

"No."

One of the doors swung open and a panicked house-elf scurried into the room; she had the same upturned spade of a nose as Kreacher, but larger eyes and more rounded ears, and she wore her crested tea-towel wrapped around her and pinned at the shoulders like a tunica. "Oh, Master, oh, Master!" she cried, "Oh, My Lady! Oh, it's terrible!"

Mr. Black whipped around at last. "What's happened?"

"My Lady was so upset, Master, she told Meecha to get her something to calm her nerves, Master," the house-elf sputtered, wringing her ears hard all the time, "and Meecha tried to give just a little bit of sleeping potion, Master, but My Lady— but My Lady, she took it away from Meecha and she drank it _all_, Master!"

Regulus's hand sprang to his mouth. "Mummy!"

Sirius gave a disdainful sniff. "It has been a few months, hasn't it? She was due for that at least once this holiday..."

"You—!" Regulus drew back his fist again but stopped, gave a cry of vexation, and ran from the room.

Sirius turned and watched him go with a touch of cynical smirk. "Meecha, go tell Mum that if she wants to scare me like that she'll have to die just _one_ of these times."

The house-elf trembled at the thought, but it was an order from a member of the household... "Y- yes, Young—"

"Belay that," Mr. Black declared. He had silently crossed the room and now stood over the hapless servant with a grim, stony face. "Tell me why you didn't stop her."

"Oh, Master!"

"Tell your Master why you didn't stop his wife from drinking that potion."

"Meecha tried, Master! Meecha wanted to stop My Lady so much, oh, please, Master!"

"But you didn't stop her. Now, tell me why."

"My Lady told Meecha not to, Master! She told Meecha to leave her, so Meecha ran here to tell, Master!"

Sirius tossed the grapes aside and took a sip of his currant juice. "That's the whole reason she does it anyway," he remarked bitterly, "for us to hear about it and go coddle her, and me to think 'Oh, Mummy's going to die and it's all my fault for—'"

He was cut short by a silvery hiss and a high, terrified squeak as his father drew the sword from his belt and brought it down on the cowering house-elf; Mr. Black didn't handle the weapon like a true swordsman, but it was enough. With another sweep of the blade he tossed the body aside—Meecha was clearly not one of the heads mounted in the entry hall.

Lupin's mind reeled. The glass fell from Sirius's hand; when it hit the floor, half the rim broke off in one clean crescent. Dark red juice splashed. He looked down at it—a splattered pool, like the other crimson pool across the room...

"What do you have to say for yourself?"

Sirius looked up. His father had turned on him, his face still grimly set, the sword still in his hand, drops of thick currant juice falling from it one by one... Lupin wrapped around him protectively; cheek-to-cheek, he felt the young Sirius's breath coming shallow and fast as he was frozen on the spot, eyes wide. He tried to keep looking at his father's face, which remained hard and dark as iron, but his eyes kept being pulled down to the blood-smeared sword. His breath was the only sound or motion between the three of them for a long time, then finally he coughed out a tense laugh that opened the way for his fear to pour out in laughter, as if this were one of he and James' more inspired pranks. Still laughing, he walked down the buffet to get himself another drink.

"Do you find this amusing?" his father asked, following him.

Looking over the collection of bottles, Sirius gave a shrug and poured a goblet full of a strong and sweet chocolate liqueur. "It is funny, when I think of it," he chuckled. He took a sip and grimaced at the burning sensation of the alcohol. "How many inches do you have to climb, in the end, to get from house-elves to blood-traitor sons?" he asked, "or is that even going up? Oh, I always knew Regulus was going to get everything one way or another, may as well have it good and tidy. I don't suppose it'll look very good to the Ministry after the scene I made... But at least you know," he said, turning around with a fresh burst of laughter, "_I_ won't tell anyone!" He took another drink from the goblet, still grinning, but Lupin knew he wasn't just telling jokes. Sirius sincerely thought his father was about to kill him.

Instead, Mr. Black's face was suddenly thrown open with shock. The sword fell from his hand. Even as it rang against the floor, he bore down on Sirius, knocked the goblet out of his hand, and seized both his arms with a savage grip. "What do you think you're saying?"

"Let go of me!" Sirius shouted.

His father shook him hard. "_What are you thinking of, to say that to me?_"

"_LET ME GO!_"

Sirius wrenched out of his father's grip and punched him in the chest. Mr. Black stood head and shoulders above his son and barely flinched; his fist shot out, reacting like a snake. If the armoring charm hadn't worn off yet, it wasn't enough to stop this. The blow to the face knocked Sirius back against the edge of the buffet table, and he fell to the floor with a cry of pain.

Lupin tightened his hold on Sirius and squeezed his eyes shut. _No, I can't watch this—! _The next thing he knew, it was finished. He was aware that there had been several more blows in the meantime, but the dream had mercifully skipped them over. Mr. Black again stood still, facing away. Sirius was picking himself up from the floor and wiping blood from his lip; he still clung to his defiance. "Are you finished? I think you missed a spot," he muttered at his father's back.

"Be quiet."

"Yes, Master. Sirius will be quiet now."

Mr. Black seemed to give just the slightest shudder. He wandered urgently out one of the doors and shut Sirius alone in the drawing room behind him.

Night silence fell, strange in the daylike light of the chandelier. Sirius scanned the room for a long moment, still unable to see his friend watching him. Alone, he poured himself one more dollop of the chocolate liqueur and swallowed it, then picked up the basket of grapes and dumped it out. Walking along the buffet table, he tucked various bits of food in the basket—biscuits, cheese, finger-sandwiches, fruit, and the bottle of currant juice. Packing a basket of food was such a storied "running away from home" gesture as to be darkly comical.

Lupin's viewpoint kept floating at his shoulder as he stealthily took his basket up to the fourth floor and came to a locked closet, down and across the hallway from the sitting room. He rattled the lock, tried some simple spells to open it, then looked around to make sure no one was watching—but someone was watching. The sitting room door was open just a crack and a low pair of eyes looked out at him. "Kreacher, open this," Sirius said.

The house-elf that came forward at the request was indeed a somewhat-less-leathery, somewhat-less-wrinkled Kreacher. "Kreacher cannot open, Young Master. Kreacher was told not to open for any except—"

"Tell me who locked it."

"My Lady locked this closet, wanted to keep Young Master out of it."

Sirius was already ignoring him by the end of the sentence. He touched his wand to the lock. "_Toujours Pur_," he said—the family motto, 'Always Pure.' The lock sprang open. "That woman... Most idiotic password ever..." He opened the closet to reveal it full of various enchanted items and vehicles, but he was interested only in the brooms, and took the longest, straightest one.

He turned around just in time to catch Kreacher heading for the staircase. "Don't you tell," he said. "Don't even let on to anyone that you saw me tonight after the party."

"Young Master always breaks his Mother's heart," Kreacher grumbled. "Will break My Lady's heart when she finds what Young Master is doing..."

"She hasn't used that since I was in the crib, so I don't know why she ought to be so upset," Sirius said, locking up the closet again. "If Regulus did it, she'd probably give him a biscuit. Well, if I bother her so much, she should be happy this time..." He frowned at the ruffled cuffs of his dress robe, and he hid the broom just inside the attic before coming back down. Kreacher followed, eyeing him watchfully. "Just leave me alone, and don't touch that broom," Sirius hissed. The house-elf disappeared down the hallway.

Sirius went down to his room; the sky-painted walls were now black and dotted with stars. In the dimness, he tossed the basket onto the bed and peeled off the horrible party clothes before opening the wardrobe and taking out a simpler robe, trousers, and a black cloak. The top drawer rattled again as he was fastening the last few buttons and he pulled it out, but there was no boggart. He only tipped its contents onto the bed and started tucking things into the basket. Lupin recognized trinkets he and James and Peter had given to Sirius for his birthday and Christmas in their first years of school.

When Sirius picked up a rectangular hand-mirror with a carved wooden backing—his one family heirloom, the Talking Mirror—he looked at himself in it and frowned to see a black eye forming. For a moment he tried to brush his long fringe over the bruise with his fingers before giving up and packing the mirror.

He had just done that when the door opened and a shaft of white light shot across the room. Even in silhouette against it, there was no mistaking Alastor Moody. He held up another almost-humanlike shape; it looked chillingly like the shadow that had been Mr. Black in the drawing room, his back to his quarreling children...

"I did everything I could think of to these, couldn't find a problem," Alastor said. "I'd still burn 'em if I were you, but it's what you want to do..."

"Just throw them on the floor for tonight," Sirius answered. The shadows hit the floor with a _phumph_ and the shaft of light slid shut as Sirius turned and reached down toward Lupin, taking him in his hand like a doll and making to tuck him into his basket of things to run away with.

Being lifted like that was dizzying; it made Remus's stomach lurch like a hippogriff ride, and he wrenched up to find himself in bed. Raising his arm, he could feel the rough wall of his Castle, but his brain was still fogged, and he felt something weighing on his body where the Dream-Sirius had taken hold of him, where his thumb had lain across Lupin's chest... Looking down at it he could see only a black blot in the dark, but when he put his hand to it, he understood—a large, furry head leading to a snout with jowly upper lips... It was Sirius in dog form, laying with his head resting on Lupin's chest. At being touched, he gave a sleepy snort and resettled himself, licking his nose and unconsciously laying one of the eponymous pad feet over his friend's arm.

Remus fell back onto the pillow, his mind now clear and wide awake. Now he could remember... The summer before his third year at Hogwarts, when they were all thirteen years old, James and Sirius had come to Hogsmeade and visited him once—even dragged him along to sneak a look at the Shrieking Shack, although he'd insisted that it wasn't so grand. They told the story that earlier that summer, Sirius had shown up on the Potters' front porch one morning before dawn, broomstick in hand, and simply stayed there ever since. When school started again, the rumor mill had been all abuzz that Sirius Black had run away from home, and that much seemed true. As far as Lupin knew, Sirius had in fact never set foot in his parents' house from the time he appeared on James' porch until bringing the Order of the Phoenix there a few days ago.

But no one had ever told him why. The stories raging through the school that year had run the gamut from an unlikely friendship between the Potters and the Blacks, all the way to Sirius having attempted to kill his brother—one eccentric Slytherin girl claimed he had succeeded and that the Regulus Black who was Sorted into her House that year was a lookalike—and been thrown out of the house or forced to flee his parents' vengeful wrath.

But what he'd seen in the dream seemed more like the Sirius he knew than any of those theories: never so distressed as to drop his biting wit, never so defeated as to lose his willful air, even the way his terror turned to laughter, as when the Ministry's Hit Wizards had dragged him away to prison laughing uncontrollably. Was it possible to dream oneself into someone else's memories? He'd heard of dreaming oneself into someone's future—although Divination was well outside his expertise—but never into their past. Someone who knew more about Legilimency might be able to answer the question, but the only such person who came to mind was Dumbledore, and Lupin hesitated at the thought of discussing it with him. If he had come into Sirius's memory, he wanted to keep it in confidence, and was unsure he could do that while talking the matter over with the Headmaster.

The notion of even bringing it up to Sirius gave him pause. How could one just ask it? "I think I might have dreamed a memory of yours; did your father beat you when you were young?" Better just to think of it as if it were only a dream...

He lay still so as not to disturb the sleeping dog, but it seemed like hours and still he couldn't fall asleep again. He stared at the ceiling and idly rubbed one of Sirius's ears. Images and sensations from the dream kept replaying themselves before his eyes until they had long since stopped making sense: Sirius trying to cover his black eye with his hair, Mr. Black's back looking like just a shadow, the liqueur being knocked out of Sirius's hand, the dead house-elf tossed onto the floor...

_It was only a dream... Treat it as if it were just a dream..._

  


The next morning, Sirius picked up his father's old robes from the floor where he'd had Alastor drop them, and put on one in black-green velvet covered with swirls of couched gold braid. The robe itself was quite handsome, but its effect was stiff and overly formal; on Sirius, it made him look as if his head and hands had been pasted onto a picture of someone else. Maybe if he could lose the haggardness left from Azkaban... No, Lupin thought, that robe would still look foreign on him.

His long, unkempt hair kept snagging in the gold braid, and he was picking it out for what seemed like the seventh time when the dumbwaiter bell rang and Molly called them down to breakfast.

"Tell me it doesn't suit me," Sirius said as they descended the stairs.

"It really doesn't," Remus assured him.

When they arrived at the kitchen, Bill was seated at the table, and Molly was just dishing out plates of bacon, eggs, and toast. Before sitting down, Sirius crossed to the sink, freed his hair from the robe again, and swept it forward over one shoulder into a single thick tail in his fist. He took one of the kitchen knives from the drainboard and began sawing it through with a tearing sound.

Molly turned to stare at him.

"It's been bothering me," he said flatly.

"I could get you some shears..." she offered.

But he was already flipping his shorn hair across his neck to cut the other side as short as the first. He tossed the cuttings into the stove and was just taking a seat when Charlie came in.

"Remus, I got something for you," he said, and held out a long, dappled silver feather. His arm was striped with beak-marks.

"Thank you very much," Lupin said, taking the feather appreciatively. "You didn't have to—"

"Charlie!" his mother cried. "You pulled a feather out of—? You could've been killed!"

"He wasn't going to kill me, Mum," Charlie explained as he sat down. "Hagrid's right about Bucky, he's really a sweetheart. Just had to look me over after that and overdid it a little, that's all. Besides, he was only mouthing; if he wanted to hurt me, he'd use the talons."

"Relax, Mum; Charlie's used to _dragons_, remember?" Bill said.

"Well... I suppose..."

"So what are we all up to today?" Charlie asked. "Since we got Bucky moved in, I can help here in the kitchen or up in the bedroom—"

"Or switch off between the two, relay back and forth so Mum and Sirius can argue," Bill suggested.

His mother blushed a little. "Well, about that, I..."

"Uh, oh, I had to open my mouth..."

"I was just thinking..."

"Not now, Molly; I don't feel like getting into it," Sirius said into his glass of juice. "Albus will decide what he decides, anyway..."

There was a long pause. "All we have left to do in the bedroom is strip the wallpaper and paint it all," Lupin said at last. "Sirius and I should be able to do that..."

"You'll get paint on that nice robe," Molly warned Sirius.

"Good, it could use it. It's not as if I'm going anywhere in it..."

"Once the room is painted and ready I'd like to get everyone in to cast protection charms, bring furniture in, sort of rechristen it generally," Lupin said, "But that will probably be a few days..."

"Well, then, I'll be helping Mum in the kitchen if you need me," Charlie offered.

"And you shouldn't have any trouble finding me, either," Bill said, with a look over at the dumbwaiter he planned to work on. "Just follow the din of rusted cogwheels..."

Lupin took the last bite of his eggs and toast and got up from the table. "Thank you for breakfast, Molly. It was very good."

"Oh, don't think a thing of it."

As he left the kitchen, Sirius got up and followed him upstairs. When they came to the bedroom, an image at the corner of Remus's vision gave him a chill of deja vu and he turned. The door to the master bedroom was open just a fraction of an inch, and, just like the sitting room door in his dream, a low pair of eyes was watching them through the crack.

Sirius saw it, too. "Do you need something?"

"No, Master. Kreacher is working, has everything Kreacher needs..."

* * *

to be continued...

  



	4. Chapter 4, being an upsidedown fish

Remus and Sirius spent that day stripping the walls in Sirius's old bedroom of paper, then, reasoning that the old wallpaper paste was very unlikely to be cursed, used scouring charms to clean up the leavings of it. Around dinnertime, they had it ready to start painting, but decided to wait until tomorrow to start, so that they could sleep there that night without fear of getting paint on Lupin's Castle accidentally. They didn't waste their time after dinner, but decided to get a start on Regulus's old bedroom.

The furnishings there were richer than those in the first bedroom had been, more like those in the master bedroom. On the initial sweep through, they hadn't disturbed any of it, and now when Lupin opened the wardrobe and made to empty it, it seized him with its oak doors, trying to pull him in and lock him inside as a couple in a painting on the wall began screaming at him. Sirius coming to help was met with a volley of punches from the drawers, and even when he pulled Remus free of it, the wardrobe began marching across the room after them. Sirius hit it repeatedly with Reductor curses until it stopped moving, then went to quiet the painting down. The Weasleys came running in to investigate the noise, but by that time, nothing was left but a mass of smashed wood and tangled cloth that made no further mischief as they prodded at it.

As best Remus could tell, it hadn't been a formidable curse, just a superficial trap that an adolescent Regulus had put in place to prevent any meddling with his belongings. Still, it was enough to make them all glad that unlike his brother, Regulus hadn't been much for keeping books in his room.

Molly, Charlie, and Bill said goodnight and went back downstairs to take the kitchen Floo to the Burrow. Sirius was just suggesting that they retire for the evening as well, when Remus, still picking through the remains of the wardrobe, found the floor panel of the main compartment suspiciously unharmed. The curses that had smashed the rest of the wardrobe to bits hadn't so much as marred its finish. Several more experimental spells failed even to scratch it, and as they tried to think why such a simple panel of wood would be so powerfully protected, Sirius guessed that it must have been a magically-created "false" bottom in which something important was stored.

He and Lupin tried a few spells and passwords to open it, but both of them had a good guess as to what the password really was: "Voldemort." Until his death, Sirius's brother had been a Death Eater, they both knew, and the war had made all of wizardkind afraid of the Dark Lord's very name in part because his Death Eaters were known for using items that were activated by speaking it aloud—items ranging from secret compartments, whose contents were safe because no one but a Death Eater dared say the password even if they guessed it, to their dreaded blacklists that, when addressed as "Voldemort", would mark in various colors the names of persons he wanted tortured, controlled, captured, or killed. Worse yet, rumor had it that he was aware of it every time someone spoke his name. Cooler heads knew that that was impossible even for the most powerful wizard, but it did seem that he could tell whenever and wherever his name was used as an incantation or password. Now that he had returned, the possibility made even Remus Lupin and Sirius Black afraid to say "Voldemort" within earshot of this piece of wood. At the very least, they would have to take it far from the house before trying it, so as to protect the Order's location, and Sirius agreed with Remus's suggestion that it would be best to turn it over to Dumbledore and let him handle it.

Once Remus had cast a magical messenger to Dumbledore, telling him they had found an item that needed his attention, they returned to Sirius's old now-stripped bedroom and set up the Castle in the Sky. After all of that, its warm, homey interior felt like a breath of fresh air despite its cramped proportions. Remus was strangely thankful, too, to see Sirius take off his father's robe and put the old prison robes back on to sleep in.

Squeezing into bed, Sirius remarked that at this rate they wouldn't be able to leave a stick of original furniture in the house, and while Order members' hand-me-downs were good, everyone would only have so much to spare.

Lupin doused the magical light in the cabin with a "_Nox_."

"I wonder where we stand with Shacklebolt, if Arthur thinks we can trust him," Sirius mused after a few moments in the dark.

"He seemed to have a good feeling about it, last I spoke to him..." Remus said.

"Be very handy, to have the Auror who's after me in the Order. The goblins never talk about your business, and if anyone else saw Shacklebolt sniffing about my vault, well, he has the perfect reason."

"Good point. Maybe better not to bring it up to Arthur, though, until he decides about Shacklebolt for himself..."

"Don't want to skew his judgement, no."

"If Dumbledore comes for that panel tomorrow, maybe mention it to him..." Remus said with a yawn.

"Mm."

* * *

After breakfast, Sirius and Lupin unloaded the supplies from the Castle to start painting. Leaving his own robe in his house, Remus somewhat hesitantly accepted Sirius's offer and put on another one of Orion Black's old robes over his clothes. He tried to pick one that would be comfortable to wear, but even this slippery-soft fabric prickled his skin strangely where the long-hanging cuffs touched his wrists. His knowledge about the previous wearer gave him an odd feeling—surely Alastor would have detected anything that wasn't ascribable to that.

Sirius had a good laugh at the irony of using hand-dyed silk brocade embellished with Fire Crab shell to protect a shabby old sweater-vest from splattering paint, but he was unequivocal that his father's clothes were more expendable than his friend's. After looking hard at Lupin in that robe and declaring that it didn't become him at all, Sirius went so far as to brush a great stripe of blue paint across his front, and they both laughed at that.

While Remus started on the walls, Sirius was struck with an idea. Taking a can of paint and a brush under his arm and laying down on his back on the floor, he cast _Decido Capita_—the reverse-gravity charm that he and James used to use for pranks in their school days. He immediately fell upward onto the ceiling and caught himself easily on his free hand and knees. From there he could easily reach the upper portions of the walls that Remus couldn't reach from the floor, and he set about painting the ceiling bright blue as well. That might not have been strictly necessary, but it made Lupin smile—he just had to warn Sirius not to paint himself into a corner.

All around, the task was surprisingly enjoyable. Just as intended, the blue color palpably changed the room's entire aspect. Everywhere they painted, it became a new and different place than it had been when they first entered it a few days ago—it felt fresh and cool and _safe_, although Sirius joked that anyone who slept there would probably dream they were a fish. By late afternoon the walls and ceiling were half-painted, and the floor sufficiently splattered that they'd decided to paint it, too. And of course, a blue door was the original superstitious prescription, but Remus planned to paint it last so that it could be left to dry when they wouldn't need to come and go through it.

Molly called them down for dinner, and this time persisted with her idea concerning Harry. She had thought that Sirius might let them take care of the house and stay with Arabella. After all, the old lady was working all alone to keep the neighborhood safe from the Death Eaters, and while it might be an obvious place for the Ministry to look for him, they didn't know about his Animagus form, so he would only have to be certain to act convincingly like a dog. Of course, she added, it would depend on what Dumbledore said to the idea. Surprisingly, Sirius just nodded and said hardly anything. Lupin would have expected some immediate reaction positive or negative, and even if Sirius were mulling it over, it seemed a strange way for him to act.

The Weasleys excused themselves right after the meal, saying they were needed at home, and as soon as the fireplace had died back down from the last handful of Floo powder, Sirius finally said something openly. "Did she suppose I hadn't thought of that?"

"Hm?" Lupin turned from the dishes. With their initial cleansing-by-hand already done, he'd just set them to washing themselves with a wave of his wand.

"The idea of me staying at Arabella's. Of course I'd thought of it. The whole time I was there, while you were... Well, it was a fight every day not to go out and pounce on Harry on the sidewalk and lick him all over, but I didn't want to toy with him, you know, before we had things settled..." Sirius said sadly.

"I'm sorry I put you through that. When I had to turn myself in for Full Moon, I didn't know where else—"

"Oh, it's not your fault. But she says that as if I'd just leave you all here to deal with this place, with _my_ family's dungeon of a house..."

"I'm sure she didn't mean any slight," Lupin said. "She knows you love Harry and was just trying to help, maybe smooth over disagreements a bit..."

"Oh, I know..." Sirius admitted. "It's only... I can't take guard duty, the only thing I can give the Order is this awful place... Well, I'm not just going to saddle you all with it and go running off on a holiday to please myself while you all break your backs, risk the Ministry packing you off to Azkaban, and listen to Dear Old Mummy scream at you. ...I ought to have told her not to bring it up to Albus; he'd either shoot the notion off the pitch or say something about I could do important work by helping Arabella, when I know he considers that all in hand. I don't know which would be worse, being knocked down again or being patronised."

Remus hated to take the tangential issue, but he had to ask: "Why didn't you say anything?"

"I just wasn't in the mood to make trouble... Saving my energy for more progress on the room. I thought maybe we could get the walls and ceiling done tonight, and that's a lot left to do."

"I had thought the same," Remus said. "If you'd like to get started again, I'll be up shortly."

Sirius paused and seemed to consider it. "No, I'll wait for you."

Once the dishes were finished, they went back upstairs; the still-unpainted area of the walls and ceiling looked dauntingly large, but they agreed to make an effort at finishing it before bed. The hours marched on into the deep darkness, and even as Lupin's body began to ache with sleepiness, the work was still no hardship. He and Sirius began chatting to keep each other awake, and the fatigue turned them to increasing silliness and ready laughter.

With less area to cover, Remus finished the walls within his reach an hour or so past midnight, while Sirius still had a large swath of ceiling left. Using the reverse-gravity charm to help took a few tries, since Remus was less skilled at it than his friend and also very tired, but together they finished the upper portion of the walls and kept attacking the ceiling. Lupin could tell that the hour was starting to get the better of him as the area remaining got smaller and smaller, but felt larger and larger at a much greater rate.

Kneeling upside-down on the ceiling, he eventually became dizzy and confused and had to look at the fireplace to remind himself which was the floor, but then turned back only to find that he had forgotten what he was doing. Trying to understand the paintbrush in his hand and the sea of blue in front of him was a struggle, and when his eyes drifted closed for a moment, he realized the answer: he was a fish. It was so obvious, he couldn't imagine why he hadn't known all these years, and he felt himself taking a great leap out of the water...

_THUD!_

Dozing off for a moment had been enough to break the spell and drop Remus hard on his back. No serious harm done; it just left a gripping ache. He fuzzily heard Sirius cast the counterspell and drop down beside him, and was already more than half asleep again as Sirius pulled the silk robe off him, led him by a hold under his arm, and lay him down in a soft, warm bed.

* * *

Something bright buzzed around Lupin's head, disturbing a deep, black sleep and an uncomfortable dream whose memory was already escaping him—he vaguely thought it had involved chasing a shadow and never being able to see the person attached. The twirling light was uncomfortable, but he struggled toward it as something heavy seemed to pull him down...

He felt Sirius move beside him, not against him like the last few weeks, but in ripples across the surface of the something he fought to free himself from. The light that he was using as a beacon stopped moving and died away, but when he managed to make a blunted sound of distress, Sirius took his shoulder and effortlessly brought him up. He woke half-sunk into a thick featherbed, covered in plush blankets and throws.

"That was a message," Sirius yawned. "Everyone's here and Kreacher won't let them in to wake us up, so I suppose he is good for something..."

"Unnh..." Remus sat up and shuffled off the thick bedcoverings. Bright sunlight filtered wanly through the windows and bedcurtains. "What time—?" _Bedcurtains?_ "Sirius, is this your parents' room?"

He looked around and gave a start, ran to the door and threw it open before giving a sigh of relief. "Of all the idiotic—! Sorry about that, Moony. Dear Morgan, we're lucky nothing happened. I was so tired when we finally fell asleep, I must not have been thinking..."

Lupin got up, and they emerged into the hallway to find Kreacher there waiting to greet them with a deep bow. "Master awakes; Kreacher bids good morning. Interlopers, mongrels and blood-traitor trash, they tried to disturb my Master's rest, but Kreacher is a good servant, kept trashy people away..."

"Fine, fine," Sirius said, "but if those 'trashy people' are members of the Order, they need to be able to disturb me anytime they like. Understand?"

"Kreacher is a good servant, understands and obeys his Master," he said, departing with several more bows that flopped his leathery ears against the floor.

"Well, he certainly seems to have changed his tune," came Alastor Moody's grizzled voice; he emerged from Regulus's bedroom and came over to them.

"It's probably because I threw him against the floor the other day... Something he could relate to..." Sirius muttered.

"Any trouble in there? Why didn't you come out earlier?" Alastor questioned, his magic eye drilling into them.

"We stayed up very late working..." Lupin yawned. "I don't know when we finally... What time is it?"

"Quarter past noon. By the look of that bedroom we thought that might be what happened, but we finally had to messenger you to make sure you could get out. Everybody's down in the kitchen, and step lightly around Molly. They had a row at the Burrow last night."

That woke Remus a bit more. Fred and George's "product development" continuing despite their mother's efforts was the closest thing he knew of to a Weasley family fight, and that had never reached the "step lightly" point—until now?

Alastor led them down to the kitchen, with Lupin bringing up the rear. Sirius was wearing the green robe with the gold braid, and watching him descend the stairs in it from behind gave Remus an unsettling sensation of deja vu that he couldn't quite identify. As he puzzled about it, he found himself thinking that it was strangely free of paint spots. Was that strange? Had Sirius worn that one yesterday? His thoughts threatened to tangle exhaustedly again, and he pushed them aside as they entered the kitchen.

Most of the Order was indeed gathered there. Albus Dumbledore looked up from pacing placidly before the fireplace. Arthur and Molly Weasley both sat at the table, across from Dedalus Diggle and Emmaline Vance. Bill was at the sideboard assembling sandwiches from a leftover beef roast and irregular slices of bread that wheezy old Elphias Doge was cutting for him. Mundungus Fletcher was absent as usual, Severus was staying well away from any meetings or suspicion—Dumbledore could easily fill him in on anything later—and Arabella was still keeping to Little Whinging, but her cat Tibbles leapt off Diggle's shoulder and upset his violet top-hat as Lupin and Sirius entered. The cat made a run at Remus and jumped directly into his arms.

"Terribly sorry to keep you all waiting," Lupin said. He stroked Tibbles, who purred and kneaded claws on his shirtsleeve, and sat down next to the Weasleys as Sirius took a chair across from him. Alastor stayed standing in a strategic spot near the door.

"Quite all right," Dumbledore assured them. "I know you've been working hard here. Arthur was just telling us about some potential new members he's been speaking to at the Ministry..."

For their benefit, Arthur repeated what he'd been saying, that he now felt quite positive about Hestia Jones, a witch who worked in the Ministry's Owlery and Mailroom—a humble job, but one that gave her a strategic view into who was in contact with whom. He was talking seriously to a couple of Aurors, as well: Kingsley Shacklebolt, whom he'd mentioned on a previous occasion, and also Nymphodora Tonks, who he thought was related to the Blacks. He looked over at Sirius as he said it, but had to ask directly to get a terse confirmation. Sirius said that she was a cousin whom he hadn't seen since she was a child, but at least her mother Andromeda had never participated in the pure-blood snobbery—in fact she'd been disowned for marrying a Muggle-born wizard.

Bill gave Remus an extra saucer of meat for Tibbles, because the cat kept stretching out a paw to grab at his sandwich.

Various other topics were addressed: Albus gave a status report of the word he was getting from Hagrid and Mme. Maxime, and said that he himself had been speaking with the Centaurs in the Forbidden Forest, although their decision hung in the balance of a philosophical debate upon the nature of destiny and freewill that he had no power to settle for them. At the least, he said, Firenze advocated fighting against the Death Eaters' evil and would help them as much as possible. Guard duty at the Department of Mysteries was also discussed; Lupin was to take a watch tomorrow night.

Alastor offered Remus the use of his best Invisibility Cloak for standing guard, and Albus promised to get the Wolfsbane Potion for him, since it would be needed in less than two weeks now. If Severus was unable to prepare it, Dumbledore said he would take it upon himself to make other arrangements. Remus most gratefully accepted both offers.

Molly's voice was a bit unsteady, but nonetheless she asked about Harry; Dumbledore still maintained that Privet Drive was the best place for him. When Molly began to wonder aloud if Arabella could use some help there, Sirius—speaking for only the second time—cut her off with a short "I don't think that's necessary." He had taken the top off his sandwich and picked at it moodily. Albus said that in an ideal situation they might consider it, but for now they didn't have hands to spare, and Arabella was very capable.

They wrapped up talking about the work on the house. Everyone had taken a good look around while Remus and Sirius slept in, and all agreed it was coming along very nicely and that "the Blue Room" in particular was shaping up into an excellent, if rather loud, safe haven.

Unfortunately it was true that completing the work would take money, which could be tricky not only to get, but also to spend without raising suspicion. In the second place, it had to be said that Mundungus Fletcher knew how to procure things off the record—Molly ground the heel of her hand against her eyebrow—and Lupin suggested getting what they could from Muggle flea markets, lawn sales, and similar. Such things were out of Wizard view and generally below the radar of even Muggle authorities.

As for where to get the money, Dumbledore had quite a lot, but the others agreed that with the Ministry holding him in such scrutiny as it was at present—Arthur dropped his sandwich, scattering beef bits, and Bill went to make him another one—it would be best for him to avoid doing any such thing that could be traced, although he could get a subtle amount. Sirius was the only other member of the Order to be truly wealthy, and he could even less afford to leave a financial paper trail; he stayed quiet as the others discussed it, and Lupin, still waiting for Arthur to be certain about Shacklebolt, held off mentioning the idea that the Auror might be able to get access to Sirius's money. In the end, everyone would do what they could, and the Order would scrape by on a few sickles here and a few galleons there, much like in the old days. Arthur even offered his beloved Muggle Coin Collection. It didn't add up to more than a few pounds, he admitted, but they were welcome to it.

And of course there were hand-me-downs. Dumbledore ventured to say that he had too many posessions, running mainly to magical devices that would be useful around the headquarters, but he lamented that very little of it was much good for sleeping on. Everyone agreed to have a look at what they could spare. However, only when everyone but Dumbledore and the Weasleys had left—Diggle prying Tibbles off Lupin's sweater to take back to Arabella's house—did Molly promise three bedroom sets and break down crying.

"Percy and I had it out last night," Arthur explained, while Bill came over and held his mother's heaving shoulders. "It ended with him storming out of the house and swearing he'd never be back..."

"I just don't know what to do with his stuff that he didn't take," Molly quavered. "Everytime I look at it... But everytime I think of taking it out, I... Oh...!"

"Don't think about that now," Lupin said. "You've done so much already, you don't have to think about that..."

"And we can't help about the money... The kids still in school and... and..."

Lupin looked up for a moment as Sirius got up and crossed silently to the door. Dumbledore caught him and asked about the item that had needed his attention; Sirius only half-turned his head, not enough for Lupin to see his eyes, but he could tell that that matter was taken care of and turned back to the Weasleys as the two of them left.

Molly was still sobbing. "I wish I could... I just cook and clean and..."

"Don't think that way. You've been a tremendous help," Lupin assured her, taking her hand.

"I ought to be able to just give you... I know he's not coming back, he said..."

"He got hot last night, Mum. Eventually he'll figure out he didn't mean it," Bill assured her as he rubbed her shoulders.

"In a way it's... It's just as well he left the house." Arthur said, picking bits of his first sandwich off the table as if cleaning them up, but half the time he missed his plate and just dropped them back on the table or onto his lap. "Fudge gave him a post in his own office, Junior Assistant or some such thing. With how Fudge is these days... He's looking for excuses to fire anybody who has anything to do with Dumbledore, probably wanted to get something on me. Probably he's... He's just using Percy..." Molly gave a great sob as Arthur rolled and squeezed a fibrous sliver of meat between his fingers until it became a sort of shapeless lump of paste. "I tried to warn him..."

"That's what really set him off," Bill explained softly. "But you know, he was always such a rulebook type, always thought that the Ministry is the Rightful Authorities and that you can't go against the Rightful Authorities without being in the Wrong..."

"And Fudge can... can give him what he wants..." Arthur added very softly, "...things I never..."

"I w-wanted to!" Molly sobbed. "I tried... We gave him everything we could—he ought to know!"

"I had Percy in my class..." Lupin offered. "Hidebound, ambitious, maybe... I'm sure he must think he's doing the right thing..."

Bill failed to suppress a derisive noise.

"...But he's also very intelligent, too intelligent to blind himself forever, I think. Maybe he lost his temper because he was desperate somehow; maybe he's begun to see through it already..." Lupin mused softly. "Percy is someone who holds himself to very high standards. It's very painful for someone like that to admit when they've been wrong, but when he does, he'll be thankful that you didn't lie for his comfort or give up on him. ...I was only his teacher one year; maybe I'm speaking out of place..."

"No, that would be Percy all over, just being stubborn," Bill said.

"Maybe you're right..." Molly sniffled. She dried her eyes with her napkin and seemed to calm somewhat, staring distantly at the table, at Lupin's hand...

Suddenly her face froze for a moment, and Lupin felt her fingers tense under his—a flash of realization that a werewolf was touching her. "I'm sorry; I should have thought better..." he breathed, lifting his hand away. Of course it would be his hand—the place to recognise a werewolf in human form. Probably she could feel the fine hair on it, and even when he tried to transfigure the unusually-long ring finger, it still never looked precisely right...

Unsure what else to do about the awkward moment, he rose from the table and left up the stairs, although he could feel all three of them watching him go.

Upstairs, Sirius was back on the ceiling painting. "Are they all right down there?"

"More or less, I think. I wondered about you; you left without a word."

"Oh, the way Molly and I have been having at each other lately, I'd have done more—" He cut off suddenly at the sound of footsteps in the hall.

Albus appeared in the doorway; the suspicious panel from Regulus's wardrobe was tucked under his arm. "Remus, may I have a bit of your time?"

"Of course."

"Don't worry, Sirius, I'll have him back before dinner," Dumbledore said, but Sirius just kept painting as Lupin came out to join him in the hallway. "I agree with your assessment of this," he said, indicating the panel. "I'd like you to come with me and investigate it in my office, if you would. Voldemort certainly knows by now that he has enemies there, so we would scarcely be tipping our hand."

"I'll be what help I can," Lupin answered.

"You give yourself too little credit." Dumbledore took off the two-tasselled hat he was wearing, bent over, and set it on the floor. "_Portus_," he said, turning it into a Portkey with a wave of his wand. "On three?"

Remus nodded, Albus counted down, and they touched the hat together. The Black House streaked away, unmeasured space rushed past at incredible speed, and just as suddenly, Dumbledore's tower office at Hogwarts snapped into place around them. Dumbledore lay the wooden panel on his desk, then dusted off his hat and put it back on, while Lupin took a moment to look around and feel the atmosphere of the room—of Hogwarts. It had been just over a year since he had last been inside the castle, and as far as he was concerned, there was nowhere like it, so he let himself enjoy the sensation with a touch of wistfulness.

"You look as if you've missed this place," Albus noticed.

"I must say I have, even since I was a student... Silly of me..."

"I shouldn't think so. I myself couldn't imagine leaving it for long, can hardly remember a time when I could," Dumbledore admitted. "As Headmaster, I would be happy to have you back, you know. Your position is open again and getting more difficult to fill, just when I no longer thought that possible."

Remus immediately shook his head. He couldn't risk teaching again after losing control and running loose on the grounds the night Sirius had been saved—not only had his transformation put anyone at risk of being bitten, but it had caused the chaos that resulted in Wormtail's escape as well as Sirius's capture and near-execution. "You already have my answer. Besides, with the Ministry watching your every move, it would only give them another weapon if you were to knowingly break the law and hire a werewolf."

"Worse things than that can happen, Remus. The Defense Against the Dark Arts position is more crucial than ever, and the Ministry has been threatening to find someone if I can't. I'd rather deal with them at arms' length than within the school itself."

He just shook his head. "I'm certain you'll find someone..."

The Headmaster paused for a moment. "Have you spoken to Sirius about casting the Fidelius Charm?"

Lupin nodded. "He agreed to it readily enough."

"Really? At the meeting he seemed to be in quite a mood."

"Maybe he is," Lupin said, frowning. "He didn't seem all that happy about the charm personally, but he knows it's sound strategy and isn't letting his personal feelings get in the way of that." The notion of Sirius being in "quite a mood" rang false to him, however. Of course he had noticed that something was wrong, but that was too simplistic an explanation. When Sirius was upset or moody, he became sharper-tongued, not silent...

"Well, let's have at this, then, shall we?" Dumbledore said, picking up the panel. "Safer to avoid looking or reaching in, and the floor of a wardrobe wouldn't expect this... Stand aside, Remus." He cast a cushioning charm on the office's stone floor, held the panel up finished side out, said "Voldemort" loud and clear, and thrust it forward through the air. Surely enough, a flurry of parchments, books, phials, and other assorted items was thrown out of it and landed softly on the charmed floor.

"Now, where to begin...?" Dumbledore wondered aloud, peering first at the littering of Death Eater artifacts, then at his collection of magical instruments and devices.

* * *

to be continued...

  



	5. Chapter 5, trust yourself about him

Lupin spent the afternoon watching and occasionally assisting as Dumbledore picked through Regulus Black's cache of dark items. Most of the phials he lay aside for Prof. Snape to examine. Many of the parchments contained Regulus's notes from spying on Lupin's circle of friends in their later school years, and it all stirred up unsettling memories. Worse yet, Dumbledore found one of the Death Eaters' blacklists scrawled on a particularly worn piece of parchment and activated it with Voldemort's name. Among the entries made on it so long ago, "Remus Lupin" and "Sirius Black" turned the violent red that meant "kill," but what Lupin felt nearly overcome by was the sight of "James Potter," "Lily Evans"—this list had been written even before their marriage—and other old friends and Order members' names scratched out: _dead_.

One of their more useful finds was a hand-copied textbook of sorts, full of dark spells favored by the Death Eaters. The Unforgivable Curses, the Dark Mark, Magical Blades, a simple technique to make a wand spurt blood rather than sparks or flowers... None of it strayed far from the themes of fear, torture, and death. The book turned out not to have any magical properties in itself, and Lupin asked to take it to study, as a guide to what to prepare for.

When he returned to the Black House through the kitchen fireplace, he brought the book, as well as the iridescent green ink Dumbledore had promised and some parchment he sent along. Remus still felt a little shaken, but he was greeted by the sight of a brown paper sack sitting on the kitchen table, folded over several times at the top and secured with a clothespin. He recognized it as something Arabella would send, and judging by the oil-spots on the sack, it contained some sort of food.

Molly Weasley looked up from cooking dinner. "Arabella tossed that through the Floo for you earlier," she confirmed. "Tibbles came after it and Bill had to chase him down and send him back home."

"Thank you." Opening the sack, he found a note folded on top of a collection of home-baked peanut butter cookies and butterbeer biscuits; it read "Remus - Stop by after your watch. I'll give you some things for the house. Arabella."

"Where is Sirius?" he asked.

"Still upstairs painting I expect; haven't heard a peep out of him since you left," Molly said. "It's getting about time if you'd fetch him for dinner. —Oh, but before you go..." She left the pot simmering and came over to Lupin. "Well, I wanted to tell you... Remus, I'm sorry."

"Hm?"

"About earlier. You were being kind to me, and well... I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. It's just the way one's raised, you know..."

He nodded in understanding. "Don't think a thing of it. I was careless; it's all right."

"No, it's not all right." She shook her head and then, very intentionally, took his hand that was still on the sack of biscuits and squeezed it with motherly roughness for a moment. "Better save those for after dinner," she said, retreating to more comfortable ground.

"I'll only take one," he said, and they shared a smile as he did so and headed upstairs.

He broke the biscuit in half and ate one piece on the way up. When he got to the Blue Room and opened the door, sure enough, Sirius was still there painting. He'd finished the ceiling and started the floor—with a stripe across the side nearest the door. He and Remus looked at each other for a long moment across the river of blue paint.

"I knew I'd forgotten something."

Lupin laughed. "I wouldn't worry. When Full Moon comes around, if we have any paint left, we ought to pour it out on the floor and cover the house in blue pawprints." That idea sounded like Padfoot or Prongs' voice in his head, but it had somehow fallen to him to say it; maybe the cookie was effecting him. Reminded of it, he held up the other half and shook it beckoningly. "Biscuit?"

Sirius took the invitation with a grin. He turned into the great black dog and bounded over to Lupin, who gave him the treat and a brisk rub around the ears. They went down to the kitchen with Sirius still on four feet, wagging his tail and leaving a trail of blue pawprints.

Even once there, Sirius seemed half-intent on having his dinner off a plate on the floor, but Molly insisted that he turn human again and wash the paint off his hands before sitting down to eat, and he again did so in silence. On the way back upstairs, over handfuls of Arabella's biscuits, Lupin decided to work as late as he could so he could sleep through the next day and rest up for his watch, and Sirius made clear that he would go along, as if it weren't even a question.

They finished the bedroom floor and painted the bright blue door as a finale, one of them on either side of it. Again they kept each other alert and entertained with lively conversation. When it was finished, Sirius looked back into the room and again declared that it was certain to cause fish dreams; Lupin admitted that one of those had actually flitted through his mind when he'd fallen off the ceiling, and it gave him a good laugh.

Next they turned their attention to Regulus's room. When Sirius touched the curtains of the canopied bed, they seized his hand and tried to drag him over to one of the massive posters while the sheet stretched itself into a long, thin strip to tie him up to it. A "_Finite_" took care of the curtain, but Remus didn't dare try that on the sheet—a bit of it had gotten around Sirius and he was afraid that ending the spell might return it to shape and tighten it. A flurry of severing charms from the two of them sent the linen ribbon crumpling to the ground in pieces. Using sheet-scraps and bits of the smashed wardrobe, Remus made up the fireplace to receive the debris while Sirius set about dismantling the bedstead.

During one of their frequent breaks, Lupin took a leftover quarter-can of paint and began brushing positive runes, symbols, and words on the walls. Sirius couldn't watch that for long without joining in, a wide-awake but rather silly mood took hold as a result of the unusual sleep schedule, and when Regulus's room was thoroughly peppered with painted figures, they doused the fireplace and continued out into the hallway. Remus said that any image with a friendly aspect would be beneficial, and soon they'd opened more cans and were painting whatever took their fancy: stars, birds, landscapes with lollipop trees and a shining blue sun... Neither of them was much of an artist, and the broad brushes in their hands were hardly meant for drawing, so the images all had a childlike quality, but that only seemed to increase the fun and charm.

Sirius was finishing a blobby dog that seemed to be a self-portrait when Remus ventured into the master bedroom. He had just dipped the brush and was reaching for the wall—thinking to make a circle and draw a blue, outsize Snidget—when a brown shape suddenly flew at his arm out of the bedcurtains and yanked him back. He cried out in surprise, was jerked off balance and fell, and just as Sirius dashed in, he recognized Kreacher. The house-elf had tackled Remus's right arm to the floor and pinned it, ranting to himself with great agitation. "My Lady's House! _My Lady's magnificent room!_ Bad enough Young Master's room! Bad enough the hallway! _Kreacher never lets—!_"

"Yes, you will!" Sirius declared.

"Oh, Master!" Kreacher cried desperately. "Please not My Lady's room! Please no mongrel trash painting garbage on My Lady's beautiful—!"

"We will paint this house any way we please, and you'll let us!"

Kreacher burst into tears and bolted from the room screaming. Sirius and Remus were just gathering themselves again when a few small crashes sounded downstairs.

"**_SIRIUS LUCIEN BLACK!_**"

"I thought you told him—"

"I said not to touch her or her curtains. He must have started throwing things at her," Sirius groaned.

Lupin looked around at the room, still hearing Mrs. Black scream below. Kreacher's outburst had certainly deflated the happy energy that had been carrying him. "Do you think we can paint in here and keep up the proper mood?"

Sirius thought about it for a moment. "I'd better not try," he said. "I'll see what I can do in the right-hand stairway..."

As Sirius left, Lupin didn't think he could recapture the proper mood either, but this room needed something. He painted a triangle of three stars—an auspicious symbol in a lucky number—on the wall facing the foot of the bed, added one more on the door, and moved on to the other stairway, where he wrote "Expecto Patronum" along the banister in large, lopsided italics.

Sirius and Remus met up again in the fourth floor hallway and painted a few symbols there—Remus was particularly pleased with a tree that had a giant bird sitting atop it—before finally stopping work for the night. They pulled back the thick curtains of the sitting room's huge bay window, revealing a powdery dawn glow creeping up behind the London skyline, then cleared enough floorspace for Lupin's Castle. After a trip to the kitchen to finish off the biscuits, they settled in to sleep before Lupin's guard at the Ministry of Magic. He felt very tired but not sleepy, and he lay awake for some time, strangely comforted to be pinned against the wall of his little cabin again.

"I wonder what Molly will think when she sees the walls," Sirius said with an audible smile. Apparently he wasn't falling asleep easily, either.

"That's one reason I wanted to be in bed before she came."

"I don't know, I think I'd like to see the look on her face. Maybe have a hidden eye there, so I could see it without having her get into it with me..."

Remus turned over, although that meant wedging his shoulder into Sirius's back. Ordinarily, "getting into it" with the person involved would be one of Sirius's favorite things about such a situation. "Please forgive me, but I must ask..."

"Hm?"

"Why are you talking only to me?"

Sirius paused at the question. "I don't know what you mean."

"As long as I've known you, you've never been shy about telling anyone what you think, not even if they had a wand pointed at your heart," Remus said. "Now these last few days, you hardly make a sound if anyone is there to hear it except me."

"I don't imagine anyone wants to hear it, anyway."

"I'm sure that isn't true," Remus persisted. "Besides, it's the first time I've known that to bother you."

"Well... It's the first time I can't do anything more than talk. Can't leave the house... Maybe just as well to leave the talking to the people who can do what's talked of..."

Remus thought his friend wasn't attached to that theory, that he was just casting about for something to say. Probably he didn't understand it himself. "Seems a terrible waste," he said. "In the moment of truth, the stronger mind very often trumps the stronger hand. The Order can't afford to go throwing away anyone's ideas; especially not when we're talking about one of the most brilliant troublemakers any of us have ever known," he added with a smile.

A long moment of silence. "That was a long time ago."

"You're still Padfoot," Remus said. He couldn't lay still and listen to Sirius say that. It seemed his words weren't enough, so he turned again, lay an arm over his friend from behind, and gently nudged the back of his head. "A more scarred, more mature version, yes, but still our brilliant Padfoot."

"I suppose," he admitted.

"I know."

Remus held on like that for a long time, still and quiet with his nose and forehead resting against Sirius's roughly-shorn hair. He had just begun to drowse off at last when he distantly heard footsteps and voices from the floor below.

"My goodness!" Molly cried out. "What in the world—?"

It took a moment to recognize the gravelly noise that followed as Alastor laughing. "That Lupin's a piece of work! Arabella taught him right, that's for sure!"

Remus smiled into Sirius's hair and let himself relax back toward sleep.

* * *

Alastor insisted on giving Lupin an extended confidential briefing that evening before guard duty. When he handed over his Invisibility Cloak, he even cast the Portkey spell on a couple of coins and put them in the pockets: one to take Lupin to the Ministry, and the other to take him—at his request as per the note—to Arabella's house in Little Whinging. "Left pocket to get in, right pocket to get out, don't mix them up, and don't forget and fiddle in the pockets during the night."

The task itself proved thankfully unremarkable. When he touched the coin in his left pocket, he was whisked off to a plain if beaurocratically imposing hallway to guard a black door at the end, whose mundane appearance belied what lay beyond it. Everything stood in the strange darkness of an office building with the lights shut off. It seemed the light was hiding—a potential charge inside every blue shape, a ghost stretching itself along the polished floor—waiting in the silence to spring back out at the flip of a switch. In the silent darkness every tiny sound, every natural creak of the walls became loud and threatening. Lupin stood at the plain black door watching and listening assiduously all night, and struggled not to let his mind wander outside this hallway, onto his strange dream or Sirius's uncharacteristic silence.

Thankfully, blue shadows were all that he saw and natural creaks were all that he heard until morning. Alastor had also lent him a precisely-set watch, and when he saw it nearing the hour for the first people at the Ministry to arrive at work, he made certain the Invisibility Cloak was wrapped securely and completely around him, keeping his hand ready over the right pocket. Hidden by the cloak, he waited until the very moment the lights flashed on and touched the coin as he squeezed his eyes shut against the brightness...

A rushing sensation—his next breath had the cabbage-and-ammonia smell of Arabella's house, and also the scent of water. He opened his eyes to find himself in her bathroom. Of course Alastor would land him there, he realised; it was the hardest part of the house to see into from outside. Even before he took the cloak off, a few cats ran in and stroked themselves against his legs.

"Remus!" Arabella greeted, looking in at him from the warmly-lit kitchen. "Come on out, dear, have a seat." She pulled up a chair at the table. Having been raised in traditional wizard garb, she'd never been able to get used to Muggle clothes, and so was dressed in a housecoat.

He folded the Invisibility Cloak neatly and draped it over an extra chair as he sat down. Soxie, a small black-and-white cat, jumped up onto his lap. "You wanted to see me?"

"So formal!" the old lady clucked, pouring cups of tea. He didn't even have to tell her to add milk and sugar; she knew how he liked it, although she had to rummage through some stacked-up tins of catfood to find the sugarbowl. "I thought we could visit awhile if you're not too tired."

"No, not at all."

"Always staying here, well, sometimes I don't know as much about what you dears are doing as I'd like." She handed him his teacup and sat down. "Now, I want you to tell me all about the house."

He described everything they had been doing to rehabilitate the Black House, and she listened intently with frequent nods of approval. She especially liked the Blue Room, and laughed like Alastor had at the pictures on the walls. Burning the furniture was prudent, she agreed, since there wasn't time to "reclaim it," but she suggested saving one room aside to do that—simply use it until it became theirs, furniture and all. Something good was lost, she said, in cutting out too much of a house's history, even if it was a history of bad things.

Very soon the conversation turned from the house to the people in it. She shook her head sadly at the Weasleys' troubles, but agreed that probably time would bring them back together. "What about Sirius?" she asked. "How is he getting along?"

Lupin was taking a sip of his tea and hesitated to say. "Oh, well enough, I suppose."

"Oh, my, that bad..." she said, and settled in closer as if he'd begun to confide something.

"I didn't..."

"Your face says it, sweetheart. Now, why don't you tell me what's the trouble."

It was no use resisting when Arabella had him like this. "He's been acting strange... Only the past few days, but it worries me. I knew that going through his family's house would bother him, but... At first he handled that well enough. He was upset when Albus first came to the house and said that Harry should stay here with his aunt and uncle and not with Sirius..."

"He wanted Harry to move in there?"

"Very much, once we had the house ready. You didn't hear about it?"

"No... Albus didn't mention it when he told me about that meeting..." she said, knitting her brows.

"But that's not the trouble. Or maybe it is; it started at just about that time... How has Harry been, by the way?"

"Oh, bearing up, but about Sirius."

That seemed a bleak description, but she wasn't letting him change the subject. "Well, when talk of Harry came up, he was sharp with Molly and then with Albus, even stormed out of the meeting after that... He sulked and acted bitter, but he seemed himself. In a bit of a temper, you know, but..."

"I know Sirius, dear," Arabella assured him. "He was in your class, after all."

"I suppose it started just after that. He's been... withdrawn since then. He chats with me, but he once cut off when someone else came to the door. He's quiet at meals... When he and I are alone, he tells me what he thinks, but when the Order met again, he scarcely said a thing. It was at the end of that meeting that Arthur and Molly told us about their troubles, and Sirius got up and left without a word!"

"That is strange!" Arabella agreed. "Have you spoken to him about it?"

"A little. I don't think he understands it himself. He talked of feeling useless, cooped up hiding in the house, but I don't think it's really that... I don't know." He sipped his tea thoughtfully. "Maybe it's the house... Maybe he's missing Harry..."

"I'm afraid I couldn't say..."

"You said Harry was only 'bearing up'?" Remus questioned.

"Oh, it's always like that when he's here..." Arabella sighed. "Vernon and Petunia, well, I fear they're the sort that gives Muggles a bad name. It's chafed Harry something terrible ever since he was small, and now that he's in school it gets worse every summer... Their boy Dudley is quite a brute, too, which doesn't help, but I can hardly blame him, seeing how they raised him..."

"I don't dare tell Sirius that..."

"And of course, poor Harry doesn't know about me," she continued. "I've been trying to ask him over for tea, even tried to hint to him when Sirius was here, but he's been avoiding me. Can't blame him for that; I always had to make a nuisance of myself before... Vernon and Petunia would have tried to keep him away from me if they thought he enjoyed my company, and heavens help him if they knew I was a witch! ...Albus said he thought Harry would be safer here?"

Remus nodded.

Arabella worried at a whisker on her chin. "I'm not so certain... I worry sometimes..."

"Hm?"

"Well, when James and Lily passed away—good rest their souls—everything was in such a state, I can see where his mother's blood was the best thing Albus could think of, but... Well, sometimes I think blood without love is thinner than water," she said. "Vernon and Dudley are simply awful to him, and it's strange... I can't say Petunia has turned her back totally on the fact that he's her sister's child, but she acts every bit as bad. In an unhappy house, I think there's always a little danger hidden away in a corner..."

"And the Dursleys have an unhappy house?" Lupin questioned.

"It's never been a happy house for Harry. Oh, it's enough to keep him safe, and you know I do everything I can, but better than with Sirius?" she questioned rhetorically. "After the way he climbed the walls while you were gone for Full Moon? Between fretting about you and wanting to see Harry, I thought he'd tear himself in two, bless his heart! He does love that boy."

"You think Sirius could actually keep Harry safer?"

Arabella sipped her tea, then looked him in the eyes. "I'll say it like this: If what I have set up here were to utterly fail, and You-Know-Who came knocking on the Dursleys' door... Well, Petunia might cry about it, but they'd hand Harry over."

Remus gave a start.

"Now Sirius, on the other hand... I don't know him as well as you do, but I think if that happened, and there was nothing else for him to do, that he'd do what James and Lily did."

Lupin was too stunned at what she was saying to respond, but he knew that she was right. He knew that Sirius would die to save Harry. So would Molly. _So would I._ And no one at the Dursley home would? Dumbledore thought that a safer place for him? Surely Albus must have a good reason, but how could anyone fault Sirius for being angry?

And then another thing occurred to him. Maybe Sirius's strange behavior was because of the disagreement over Harry, or maybe it wasn't, but Remus suddenly felt convinced that Harry could help. Whatever it was that had taken hold of Sirius, Harry's presence would certainly give him strength to fight it, if nothing else.

"Whatever is the matter with him, it says a good deal that he's still talking to you," Arabella said, breaking the pause. "You take good care of him, dear. He must trust you about himself, so you trust yourself about him."

He sat back and frowned. Soxie tried to nudge her head against his teacup, so he put it aside and stroked her. Trusting himself about Sirius could place him in opposition to the Order's plans, but like Sirius, he was still very aware of the importance of their work... "That could become complicated..."

"I'm sure it's nothing that Moony can't handle," Arabella assured him, patting his hand. "Oh, dear me! I asked you over to give you some things for the house, and then I got to chattering and forgot all about it..."

She gave him as much as he could hold in his arms: a bedspread and several doilies crocheted by hand, some old wall-hangings and knick-knacks—one specially to go over the fireplace in the Blue Room, since she knew they couldn't paint that—as well as garden vegetables, homemade bread, and even a whole chocolate cake still in the pan, with a rough layer of icing spread over it. By arranging the other things in the paper sacks with the bread and vegetables, somehow he managed it all as she saw him off through the Floo, shooing cats away from following.

"Good morning, Molly," Remus greeted as he emerged into the kitchen of the Black House. He could just see the top of her graying red hair over his load.

"Shh!"

He put down the sacks to get a clear view; Molly took her finger from her lips and pointed. Sirius was asleep at the kitchen table, his head resting on his folded arms. There was a little spot of drool on the velvet sleeve.

"He was waiting for you," Molly whispered. "Now that you're back, I'll fix breakfast..."

* * *

to be continued...

  



	6. Chapter 6, it is my decision

Days and nights went by, and the house continued to improve bit by bit. Lupin had guard duty often enough that it was easier for him and Sirius to maintain a nocturnal schedule rather than attempting to switch back and forth. Unfortunately it meant that they only saw the Weasleys for a few hours in the mornings and evenings, but every night they woke up to find more good work done for them to continue from.

The morning after Lupin's second watch at the Ministry, Bill and Charlie Weasley decided that the paint in the Blue Room was safely dry to bring in furniture. They borrowed Lupin's house again to move things from the Burrow, carried in two dressing tables, and put one on each side of the fireplace; then came three beds with their heads against the opposite wall. The bedrooms in the Black house were luxuriously large, so a sufficient fork of floorspace was left to walk around and even put Bill's old writing desk in a corner. In moving it, they broke a few more flakes off its already-chipped veneer, but no one worried much about it, especially not Bill.

Once they had it all in place, the brothers said they would leave Sirius and Remus to start "breaking it in." They slept that day in the donated beds, which had a pleasantly homey smell, like firewood with a touch of remembered home cooking.

Charlie wasn't at the house that evening, and didn't come for more than brief visits in the days that followed; he was still sorting through his situation and trying decide whether to go back to Romania or try to find a job in England. Dumbledore suggested that making overseas contacts would be very valuable—so Lupin heard through Molly—and most of the good positions for Charlie's expertise were ultimately Ministry jobs: wildlife preserves, zoos, and similar. Unfortunately, the higher-ups at the Ministry of Magic were already finding a hundred little ways to make Arthur's days miserable, and it was clear to everyone that this was no time for another Weasley to put in at the Ministry.

Bill, on the other hand, was in England to stay, having transferred to Gringotts' main office to do desk work and give "ground school" preliminary training to new curse-breakers. However, the holiday he'd taken only lasted a few more days, so he took that time to go with Remus and Sirius through some of the rooms that hadn't been so thoroughly swept for curses yet. They planned to concentrate on the drawing room and master bedroom; the boxes from the attic that were piled in the sitting room would take too long to go through, and they reasoned that anyone leaving curses about would be more likely to have overlooked those. However, mentioning the sitting room did remind Sirius of the fourth-floor broom closet right near it, and they decided to empty that before moving on.

The closet had a padlock on its double doors, which Sirius opened with a tap of his wand and the words "_Toujours Pur_"—just like in Lupin's dream. Inside they found some trunks of magical devices which they carried to the drawing room to go through later, but most notable were the five brooms there, which they took down to the entry hallway with its high ceiling, and they whispered over them and checked and tried them under the baleful glares of Sirius's painted ancestors.

Two of the brooms were Nimbus 1400s—the newly-released top-of-the-line, Sirius recalled, the year his brother had died. Now it was an outdated model, but Bill noted that it was still better than most of his family's brooms. Sirius wanted to keep the broom closet stocked for the Order's use, but said he'd be quite willing to trade once they were certain that these were safe.

They also found an older but rarer Nimbus 1001 "Nights" Limited Edition, which had a diamond-studded ebony shaft and pale, silvery willow straws bound with a strong ribbon of black silk. It bore an edition number of "0006/1001."

The last two were the most extravagant: a matching pair, each elaborately carved and finished, obviously a special artist commission. Indeed, just above the sheeny head of bristles, each one was inscribed with the stamp identifying the maker as a Ministry-licensed broom artisan and the words: "Elmeric Weatherhill, for" —here one read "Orion Black" and the other "Estelle Black"— "on the occasion of 10th wedding anniversary, October 13th, 1968."

After an initial check revealed no traps or curses, the three of them cast cushioning charms over all the surfaces of the entry hall and tried lifting off and hovering around on the brooms, getting disapproving grumbles from the paintings. Mrs. Black's broom turned out to be totally inoperable, and only Sirius could get any response from his father's. Other than that, all seemed to be in perfect working order. Lupin was rather awkward on a broom, though, and admitted that he hadn't flown one since he was a student—he had never been able to afford one. Sirius shook his head at that and declared that the "1001 Nights" was now Remus's broom.

Bill took the Nimbus 1400s when he left that evening, promising to bring back some of the Weasleys' brooms after more safety checks. Sirius and Lupin locked the other brooms back in their closet and spent the night sorting through boxes in the sitting room. When they went back to the Blue Room to go to bed, Sirius's prison robes were missing, and he had to sleep in the stiff velvet robe.

The next morning they started in the bedroom, where they caught Kreacher scrubbing at the blue stars on the wall; he'd already rendered one in need of touching-up, and additionally admitted to having thrown out the old prison robes as garbage. Sirius told him to leave everything they'd painted alone and to stay out of the room while he, Remus, and Bill were going through it; the house-elf bowed and obeyed, but only retreated as far as the doorway and watched them anxiously. As they pulled out the contents of the wardrobes and dressers, he caused just enough noise to make his disapproval known without being ordered further away.

They checked Mr. Black's side of the room without incident. The robes had already been taken from the wardrobe, and nothing else in it caused trouble, although Remus and Bill examined the highly-ornamented sword they found there with special scrutiny. Lupin looked not only to see whether it was dangerous, but also whether it looked familiar; he had a sickening feeling that it did, but couldn't remember such a detail from his dream clearly enough to be certain that it matched. The contents of the dresser were mostly innocuous garments—trousers, undershirts, socks, etc., none presenting detectable danger—but the top drawer was given more to opulent accessories. It contained gloves, rings, cufflinks and other gems, and even a few gentlemanly canes fitted magically inside it, all things that called for more careful checking. However, even secret compartments in one ring and some of the canes turned up empty and harmless, and the most threatening thing they encountered was a black left-hand glove wearing a golden family crest ring, which would clench its empty calfskin fingers tightly enough to thwart any attempt at removing the signet—or anyone but Sirius's efforts to put the glove on.

Lupin sat on the edge of the bed sifting through the extensive array of jewelled watch-fobs as Sirius and Bill took on Mrs. Black's wardrobe to Kreacher's obvious distress. They started with a large inlaid-lacquer jewelry box on the top shelf, and no sooner had they opened it than all the brooches and hatpins flew out and across the room to attack Lupin. He only barely raised his arms in time as they hurled themselves at his face and neck, and the pins stabbed deeply into him before Sirius and Bill could stop them.

A "_Finite!_" made all their hinges and chains at last go slack, and Sirius climbed across the bed and asked Remus if he was badly hurt. He was just answering that he would be all right when they heard a dry cackle. Kreacher was laughing from the doorway. Sirius began to turn on the house-elf in a rage, but Lupin seized a fistful of his robe to stop him, even as the needles in his arm made the motion a spasm of agony. His cry of pain stopped his friend immediately, and Sirius only barked at Kreacher to go away before turning back to attend to him. The gold braid on Sirius's robe scratched Lupin's hand, painfully pulling out a brooch that had become snagged in it.

As Bill and Sirius carefully picked the jewelled thorns out of him, they had to wonder why the baubles had gone out of their way to attack the person furthest from them. The answer was quickly obvious: Sirius and Bill may have been "blood-traitors," but they came from pure wizard families; Remus was the only "half-blood mongrel" in the room. There was no telling what else Mrs. Black had enchanted to attack any Muggle blood it could, so Sirius and Bill decided to continue the task alone, once they had taken Remus to a bed in the Blue Room and called Molly to tend to his injuries. After she applied medicine and bandages, he soon fell asleep.

When Molly woke Lupin and Sirius for dinner, it was left to Bill to spend the meal telling Remus about what they'd found after he left. Sirius's mother had left behind robes that shrieked at anyone who touched them, long stockings that had tried to gag them and tie them hand and foot, and a pair of buttoned gloves that had attempted to throttle Sirius, not to even begin talking about her extensive collection of shoes and hats.

Predictably, Sirius had a good deal to say about his mother and her cursed posessions, but withheld it until the Weasleys had gone home and he and Lupin were sorting through things in the sitting room. Again he cut off when Molly and Bill returned in the morning. The day before, he had told Bill all the significance of every item he was asked about, even if he wouldn't volunteer information, but this morning as they finished the bedroom and started on the drawing room, he offered only terse, clipped replies, as if annoyed at the presence of an interloper. Even when he and Lupin went to bed that morning, Remus's attempts at conversation were met with only distracted mutterings of response.

_He might only be tired..._ Lupin told himself, settling in on his back and staring at the blue-painted ceiling for a moment before closing his eyes. As he drifted off to sleep, his consciousness drew inward until everything beyond his face felt miles away, and he and Sirius's beds were as far apart as two continents, floating in this painted sea.

* * *

Lupin gazed out the window as he buttoned his cuffs. He didn't think he would ever be accustomed to beginning his day with the sky pink from sunset, not sunrise, but around this time it might be just as well. Full Moon was only one more night away after tonight, close enough to prickle him. Even when he wasn't transformed, his nights in bed tended to be fitful if not sleepless when the moon was round and bright. He pulled his old sweater over his head and turned around as he began combing his hair. Sirius was just sitting on his bed, gazing toward the fireplace mantel with a thoughtful frown.

Remus followed his eyes and looked at the decoration Arabella had given him to put there, a painted ceramic tile in a frame of cast-iron filligree. Age had stained the tile yellow and the iron and paint black, even the once-colorful dot flowers surrounding the message that was painted on it:

"Bless his Heart  
Bless this Home  
Bless us All  
Where'er We Roam,"

in chipped, chisel-brushed letters. The first line had once read "Bless this Hearth," but Remus had found it at Arabella's house when he was very young, young enough that he hadn't yet known the word "hearth." He had, however, noticed Arabella's tendency to say "Bless his heart" in affection for third parties, reasoned that that must be the intended message, and had thoughtfully made corrections by scratching at the paint with his fingernail. A few flecks and smudges were all that remained of the first _t_ and the final _h_.

Sirius was still staring pensively at it. "Missing Harry?" Remus asked, tying back his hair.

"Hm? Oh... yes..." He shook his head as if to clear it. "I don't know what has been wrong with me lately... Sometimes I think it's this haunted tomb of a house... Sometimes I think it's not being able to help with anything important..."

"That isn't—"

"...And sometimes I think it's being here while Harry is held prisoner on Prissiness Drive in the foulest pit of Muggledom, as if I'm so incapable or so horrible that my godson is better off with people who hate him than with me..." He trailed off in a hot sigh, but before Remus could find words, he spoke again. "But honestly, I don't know what it is. Every time I try to puzzle it out, I remind myself of everything that's wrong, and I come out of it feeling even worse and even more like everyone—" He stopped at the sound of the dumbwaiter bell—Molly had dinner ready.

Lupin clasped Sirius's shoulder. "I'm certain you'll get through it, whatever it is. When I think of everything you've come through already, it will take much worse than this to get the better of you."

Sirius smiled gamely for a moment, but when Lupin took a step toward the door, he didn't move. "You go on; I'll be down shortly."

"I'd be happy to wait."

"No, go ahead."

Remus hesitated for a moment and gave his shoulder an affectionate squeeze before going down to the kitchen.

Alastor was there along with Molly and Bill; he had a plate of curry which he was examining not only with his magical eye, but through an Arcanocular, a contraption of lenses that looked like an elaborate, particolored jeweller's loupe. He kept flipping lenses in and out from before his eye in different combinations, and a Sneakoscope lay still on its side on the table among a collection of other magical detectors. "Remus, rise and shine," he greeted distractedly. Seemingly assured that the food was safe, he folded the Arcanocular and put it aside before taking a hand-hammered spoon out of his robe. "Hate to do this to you, but can you cover the Ministry tonight?"

"I suppose I could," Lupin said, taking a seat as Molly obliged him with a plate. "But why?"

"That useless gi—" Moody began around a mouthful.

"Alastor," Molly chided.

He swallowed. "Sorry, Molly. Mundungus Fletcher was supposed to cover tonight, but... I was talking to Shacklebolt and the Tonks girl today—they're coming for dinner in a few days, by the way—and seems there's a jump in the off-the-books Time Turner market since he stood watch last."

Lupin shook his head into his hand as Bill groaned through an amused grin and Molly gave a loud, hot sigh.

"Cloak's over there," Moody said, pointing to a chair near the fireplace where the Invisibility Cloak was draped. "Still has the portkey-coins in the pockets. I'll set up the right one to take you to Dumbledore's office in the morning. He wants to see you."

"Oh, good. I would've had to contact him tomorrow about the potion..."

"Until I get some of our other slugabeds into it, that just leaves you, me, and Diggle for guard duty," Alastor growled, then muttered something about "sleep schedules," "day jobs," and "Constant Vigilance" around a mouthful of curry. "He and I can both take it twice, but then can you be back the first night you're back to normal?"

"That shouldn't be a problem," Lupin said. The transformations to and fro in themselves always strained him, but he would have a full day after changing back to recover, and while he was a wolf, he couldn't talk, write, or do anything at all that required an opposable thumb, so there wasn't much for it but to curl up and sleep.

"I could do some, but I thought with my experience, I ought to concentrate on the house," Bill offered.

"Probably should," Alastor agreed. "But we'll have it pretty clean before long. What kind of schedule will you be looking at by then?"

While they discussed it, Molly leaned over to Lupin. "What's keeping Sirius?"

"I don't know. He said he'd be coming just a little after me."

"Is he angry with me, do you think? All that about Harry...?"

He looked up at her. Obviously she had noticed Sirius's strange behavior as well, which he was at least glad for; he'd begun to wonder if no one else was paying attention. "No, I'm quite certain it isn't that," he assured her. "I'll have to tell him about the change in guard arrangements, and I can take a plate up for him..."

* * *

The news of Remus unexpectedly being called away for the night at least stoked Sirius's mood into heated complaining for awhile. Remus tried to steer him off course whenever he started in the direction of "if only" he could take turns on guard duty, and he slipped in some of the old jokes and reminiscences—heavens, yes, The Marauders would've jumped at a chance to get their hands on a Time-Turner and would've made all sorts of wonderful mischief with it. He even managed to elicit some smiles, although he thought he saw a worrying hint of wistfulness in Sirius's face even then.

Unfortunately they weren't able to talk long; Lupin hated having to leave his friend, but nothing for it. The watch tonight felt even longer than the ones before, now that the near-full moonlight reached even through all the walls and floors and ceilings of the Ministry and caused a hint of tingling itch in his bones and his brain that he could never reach to scratch. For now, it merely lay dormant, not intruding on his body or his thoughts, but always there as a lurking irritation. He trusted and was thankful that Dumbledore would have the Wolfsbane Potion for him in the morning; it wouldn't get rid of the sensation and indeed had its own side effects, but at least would numb and dull it. Unmedicated, the moonlight would needle him more and more intensely until the night it transformed his body and drove him mad—mad enough to bite anyone close, anyone he could chase down...

He shook off those thoughts. That wouldn't happen this month, and for tonight the irritation could even be a blessing. It kept him restlessly alert and pacing watchfully in front of the Department of Mysteries' black door through the long, silent darkness.

When morning came, he again waited there under the Invisibility Cloak until the lights flicked on—he reasoned that if he was in any way detectable so that someone would see a hint of change when he left, he could hide it in that moment as the hallway was totally transformed by the light and be shrugged off as just a shadow, a trick the person's senses had played in the dark. When he touched the coin in the cloak's right pocket, he was whipped away from that burst of illumination into a light even brighter. Morning sun streamed straight into the tall windows of Dumbledore's office.

Lupin had half-expected to arrive and find the Headmaster there in his chair, greeting him over the goblet of potion ready and sitting on the desk, but the room was quite still except for Fawkes on his perch, who raised his head and greeted Lupin with a bright eyed gaze and a snatch of song. Remus looked around at the empty room as he walked over to the phoenix. "Albus isn't here in the office?"

Fawkes gracefully cocked his head and leaned forward as if to nuzzle Lupin's face with his beak. Only when Remus raised his hands into his own view did it dawn on him that Fawkes could not only see him but recognize him through the Invisibility Cloak. The bird cooed happily as Remus stroked his ruby-fire feathers. "I don't know what Albus would say about this, but..." He reached under the cloak into his own robe, broke off a small piece of the chocolate bar he always kept in his pocket, and offered it. Fawkes pecked at it, trilling brightly between nibbles, and when it was gone he stroked his head against Remus's hand.

He waited there for a long time, and after hours of standing and pacing in the Ministry's hallway, he soon had to go over to one of the armchairs in front of Dumbledore's desk to rest. With one soft flap, Fawkes glided after him and perched on the winged back of the chair. More time dragged by. The slant of the light from the windows grew steeper, and as the wait turned into hours, Lupin wondered if perhaps he should leave, go back to the Black House and wait for Dumbledore to call him, but then, getting in touch with Dumbledore about the Wolfsbane Potion would be the first thing he had to do anyway, and the only absolutely sure way to prevent a message's interception was not to send it, so best to keep magical communication to a minimum and simply wait... He got up and paced the room, perused the bookshelves, looked at all the paintings of the former Hogwarts Headmasters—who took no more notice of him than a whispered "Do you think someone's here? I thought I heard something..." "Oh, I shouldn't worry..."—and came back to the bookshelf again. Did he dare take anything down from it? He stood for a minute or two, frozen in thought at the question with his finger on the spine of "What None Can Spell: The Limits of Magic" by Lenora Goshawk. Fawkes chirped at him from the back of the armchair, and he took the book back over there and sat down with it.

He had some trouble focussing on reading; he kept thinking that Sirius and the others must be wondering where he was and what could be taking him so long. However, he had at last managed to become engrossed in the book and was a little bit into chapter two when he heard someone coming on the stairs. Not making any assumptions about who it might be, he rose and turned around to stand behind the chair, pulling the Invisibility Cloak close around him and holding the book to his chest to hide it—probably less likely to arouse suspicion than leaving it laying on the desk.

As the footsteps got closer he heard familiar voices, and when the door opened, Dumbledore entered carrying the goblet of potion, with Severus Snape following close behind him. "—These circumstances, I don't see why you don't simply give _me_ the position," Severus was saying. "Surely a Ministry-appointed Potions Master would do less damage."

"Yes, but we have an excellent Potions-Master, one whom, in light of recent years, I do not wish to gamble on one year of Defense," Albus answered, setting the potion on his desk. "Besides, I do feel that Potions is more suited to your temperament as a teacher."

"Meaning that I'm strict?" He took the chair beside the one where Fawkes still perched and Lupin still stood invisible.

"In a word, yes, but then Potions is a strict subject—doesn't admit of much error."

"And I suppose Defense Against the Dark Arts can afford mistakes?" Severus questioned, arching an eyebrow.

"Defense requires more space for students to grow," Dumbledore answered.

"Well, I'm certain Fudge will send you someone very nurturing."

"You might be surprised. I'm constantly amazed at how much the students can grow in that subject when deprived of believable guidance..." The Headmaster trailed off distractedly as he looked around, right past Lupin under the cloak. "I suppose Remus must have left..."

Fawkes chirruped at him, but he was facing away by the time Lupin took off the cloak. Snape noticed first.

"I'll just have to send a messeng—ah." Albus finally turned to see him.

"Enjoying our conversation, Remus?" Severus asked tartly.

_I've heard better_, quipped the Padfoot-and-Prongs voice in his head, but he thought it an inappropriate thing to say. "I didn't want to interrupt." He came back around in front of the chair, folded the Invisibility Cloak neatly, put it on Dumbledore's desk along with the book, and sat down.

"Your potion, Remus," Dumbledore said, offering it. "Terribly sorry to keep you waiting, but Minister Fudge insisted on having a chat. He tells me that I have twenty-four hours to find a Defense Against the Dark Arts professor for the coming term or else he will. Not that I think he can hold me to that, however..."

Lupin lifted the goblet from the desk and took a bracing swallow from it. As always, the Wolfsbane Potion tasted horribly bitter and burned his throat, not to mention its texture, which had just enough fibrous viscosity that it was a struggle not to gag on it. He took a deep breath and drained the rest in one draught, with a grimace and a shudder.

"You'll forgive me if I don't experiment with improving the taste. This potion especially doesn't 'admit of much error'," Severus said.

"Of course, you're quite right," Lupin coughed. "Despite the look on my face, I appreciate it very much. Thank you."

"If you'll excuse us please, Severus," Dumbledore said. "There are matters I would like to discuss with Prof. Lupin."

"Should I be welcoming him back...?" Snape asked as he stood to glare down his nose at Remus.

"I fear that would be premature at this point."

"Very well." He took the goblet with him and walked stiffly out of the office.

When the door had closed behind Severus, Dumbledore fixed his gaze on Lupin across his desk. "As you can see, your post is still very much open. I don't suppose you've reconsidered?"

Lupin shook his head sadly and elicited a sigh. "Have you spoken to Alastor about it?"

"I did, first thing. At this point, Alastor feels that working in the field as a member of the Order is more important, and after what he went through this past year... Well, when I broached the subject of him staying on, he didn't give me a direct 'yes' or 'no.' He suddenly remembered an urgent appointment, and for reasons unknown I was finding Remote Sneakoscope Tokens and similar devices hidden about my office for several weeks. I hesitate to bring the matter up again."

Remus nodded understandingly. Another thought came to him, a suggestion and where its discussion could lead. He hesitated to say it, but beneath his surface of caution, the deeper parts of him very much wanted to...

Fawkes fluffed his feathers and settled comfortably into them, still perched on Remus's chair. He began to sing low and soft, as if it were a lullaby to himself.

"What about Arabella?" Remus asked.

"You know very well that she can't be spared," Albus said.

"Home and family matters regarding Harry have changed. Perhaps it would be best for him to live with Sirius and free Arabella for other work."

Dumbledore sat back, seeming a little surprised as Remus looked him directly in the eyes. "I thought that had been discussed, we had agreed that keeping him with his mother's relations was best."

Remus reflected back on that first meeting at the Black House, Fawkes still humming in the silence. "Sirius challenged you on whether born relation was stronger than magical relation, relation by choice... He left without giving you a chance to answer, and the matter was merely dropped..."

"I understand how he feels, but tell me," Dumbledore looked over his spectacles at Lupin the way he might look at a student, "what did a magical bond of blood mean to Peter Pettigrew in the end?"

"What did a natural bond of blood mean to Barty Crouch?" he countered. He had let the idea occur to him aloud and was a little surprised at himself; nonetheless he pressed on. "What was it that saved Harry when he was a baby? Was it Lily's blood, or was it her love?"

"Her blood that was shed for love," Albus answered thoughtfully. "Her love that was born of blood."

"Failing someone who has both, is he safer with someone who shares that blood, or with someone who shares that love?" Remus asked. "Lily loved Harry enough to die for him. Sirius's familial relation may be only artificial, but I know that he also loves Harry that much. So does Molly, I believe. I... Well, I like to think that even I would, if it came to that..." He hit an awkward place and trailed off, but quickly recovered. "Can we say that about Petunia Dursley?"

Albus knit his brows. "There are other issues to consider," he said. "Not least being that of putting all our proverbial eggs in one proverbial basket. If we lose the headquarters, we've lost a great deal, but if we lose Harry as well, then you know the prophecy—we've lost everything."

"According to the prophecy, losing Harry loses us everything, regardless of anything else, so the safest place for him is still the most important issue."

"Do you think the Black House is safe enough for him? I understand you had an unfortunate experience with Estelle's jewelry, and Harry would hardly have passed her inspection..."

"I believe it's manageable already," Lupin said. "By the time Arabella would have to leave it will be better; we'll have cast the Fidelius Charm by then..." As he mentioned the Fidelius Charm, he suddenly realised—it would require the participation of everyone who knew that the Black House was the Order's headquarders. _You can't cast it without me._

He thought it looking directly into Albus's sparkling eyes, and the Headmaster snapped to closer attention and returned him a penetrating gaze. No doubt he had caught that thought and was now listening closely to everything passing through Remus's mind—but better that he did. Considering such a thing in secret would be sabotage, but he thought he was right to realize, and Albus should know, too: _It is my decision. Sirius and Harry need each other, Harry can't do anything from where he is, and Sirius doesn't feel that he's in any position to impose... But I know they need each other, you need me, and it is my decision._ He remembered Sirius sitting in the kitchen, saying that James and Lily had still had one blood brother left whom the law would entrust their child to before Muggle relatives, but that if that vague memory was true... If Albus had mentioned it to him, asked didn't he think that was best...

"I did," Albus confirmed.

Sirius's voice echoed in Remus's mind. _"...He had to know as well as anybody that you'd agree to **anything** he told you he'd decided..."_

"Do you think he was right, that that was wrong of me?" Dumbledore asked patiently.

Remus closed his eyes, hiding his thoughts again. "I think he was right about _me_. It was a mistake that I don't intend to repeat."

"You know how important the Order's work is..."

Fawkes was still singing softly just above Lupin's head. "I know the importance of several things," he said, then opened his eyes with a touch of sly smile. "I'm not going to do anything to compromise our headquarters. I couldn't put everyone there in danger, but perhaps... Perhaps I wanted to remind you who you're dealing with. Moony wasn't _only_ the Marauders' conscience, you know."

Dumbledore gave a weary sigh and rubbed his crooked nose. "I'll take your thoughts into consideration..." he said. "You've been standing watch all night, you should go back to the house and get some rest..."

"I expect you'll see Alastor to return his cloak before I do..."

He nodded.

As Lupin crossed to the fireplace, he heard Albus speaking softly behind him as Fawkes ended his song in a flourish. "Did you think I wouldn't notice you there?" A little trill from the Phoenix. "You beautiful traitor, you..."

Of course, Remus remembered: Phoenix song was said to lend courage to the pure of heart. Had Fawkes meant to encourage such challenging of his own owner? No use wondering about it... He took a handful of Floo powder from the bottle on the mantelpiece and left for the Black House.

He found Molly there in the kitchen making the mid-day meal, but she was alone in the room. It was the first time he had returned from guard duty and not found Sirius waiting for him, but then, he was very late...

"You're back! Is anything wrong?" Molly asked. "I was starting to wonder..."

"No, everything is all right. Albus was detained on business and I had to wait for him."

"I'll have lunch ready in just a few minutes, and then I'll get you something to eat..." she said apologetically.

"Thank you, but I think I'll go on to bed..." he said, although he did notice that there was one largish piece of Arabella's chocolate cake left, and he took that. "Have a good day."

"Sleep well."

He climbed up to the third floor and opened the solid blue door of Sirius's old bedroom. After the long watch and the long wait, the beds did look inviting, but Sirius wasn't here, either. He had an uncomfortable intuition, took his night-robe, and checked the master bedroom next. As he'd thought, Sirius was asleep there in the grand curtained bed.

It was true that they had spent one night here and not been harmed, but he thought surely Sirius shouldn't be sleeping there alone...

* * *

to be continued...

  



	7. Chapter 7, Master says leave him alone

That night was Remus's last one before he was due to transform. Where the previous night had brought a slight needling from the moon, the Wolfsbane Potion acting on it now left him feeling leaden, feverish and ill. When Molly rang the bell for dinner, he had to drag himself out of bed and down to the kitchen, with Sirius quietly shadowing him. Molly remarked on how pale and sickly he looked; he could only tell her that it was normal and try to eat as well as he could. He knew it would be better for his health, especially now, to have a hearty dinner, but his stomach was feeling surly, and he ate slowly and tediously to avoid offending it.

He and Sirius again sifted through boxes in the sitting room, but Sirius was still in his darkly silent mood, and Remus lacked the energy to keep him talking tonight. He didn't think that his friend was being totally remote, however. Sirius seemed to notice that he felt so unwell and to make a point of staying physically closer to him than usual; they took the boxes one by one and unpacked them together, where before they would have split up. It made the work go more slowly, but surely tonight any progress was an achievement.

At some point Remus thought to ask why Sirius had gone to sleep in his parents' bedroom, and Sirius said that the effect of all the blue paint somehow hadn't been agreeing with him. Besides, it had been safe once. Lupin recalled what Arabella had said, that it would be a good idea to reclaim one room as their own through use rather than stripping it, and supposed that the Master Bedroom would be a good candidate—especially since doing otherwise might finally kill poor Kreacher. A sarcastic sniff at that last observation was Sirius's only reply.

When the moonlight disappeared into the morning, some of the sick feeling faded with it, enough that after breakfast Remus could settle in comfortably to sleep for the day, his last chance to rest before the three night period of Full Moon began. He and Sirius again took the master bedroom, and with the Wolfsbane Potion still effecting him, he slept very soundly until he was awakened by the first sliver of the rising moon tickling in his bones: that dreaded, familiar feeling... He turned over toward the window; the sun was completely gone, but it didn't seem dark. Before it was even half-risen, the moon shone oppressively bright. And he was alone in the room. Sirius must have left earlier, and he must have slept through it...

Remus took off his clothes to prevent them being torn and lay down again in the bed to wait, covered by the fine sheets and bedspreads. Despite having been a werewolf practically all his life, he could never get used to this. It was always terrible, waiting for it to happen; he wanted it to be over, but his dread stretched every second. Still, such a blessing to meet it like this, after last month... So much worse to be in one of the Ministry's stone boxes, waiting to go insane and begin attacking the only victim he could reach—himself—and there, he'd been hopelessly far from anyone but cold beaurocrats and fellow unfortunates, cut off from any warm voice or face or touch... That was the one thing he wished for now: that someone could be with him...

He heard the bedroom door open and shut, and he knew that it must be Sirius he could feel sitting down on the edge of the bed and laying a hand on his shoulder. "Bearing up?"

"I always do," Remus answered, his voice quiet and strained despite his gratitude. "I suppose this is my last chance to say anything to you for three nights." He felt it coming closer... There were no more than minutes left, and then for three nights he wouldn't be able to speak. Suddenly realizing that, he wanted to say something, something that could keep Sirius afloat in whatever his trouble was for that long, but he couldn't think what that would be. "That means that when the new members come, you'll have to do the talking for both of us."

"Hm. Perhaps I'll find some common ground with Shacklebolt," he joked, but dully.

Remus began to panic as it left off at that. Every moment was a wasted chance, but the more desperate he became for something to say, the more his mind was frozen...

_Stay with me!_

It gripped him in the last moment with a violent need to say just that, not even knowing what it meant. He fought to shout it: "**_Stay—!_**" —but the wave of force with which it had struck his mind turned to a convulsion in his body, and after that one word he seized up too completely to speak or even cry out from the pain that wracked him. Bones contracting, bones pushing and stretching... His fingers drew up into padded toes; the nails pinched and curled into claws. Every millimetre of him was caught up in the throes of it, as if it were sheer effort of his muscles reshaping his frame, arduously forcing out every hair in the thick pelt, as if that straining agony would go on and on until his body tore itself to pieces...

And then it was finished and left him panting for only a few breaths, with barely even a residual ache. A moment ago it had felt as if his body were contorting into something totally alien, but now that he had achieved it, the wolf shape was perfectly natural, if impractical. As always he was ineffably thankful for the potion that let him keep his mind and be himself even in this other body.

Lupin nosed his way out from under the bedspreads and freed himself from them by turning in a circle and stepping around the pillows. Sirius reached over to stroke his fur and pat his shoulder. "It's pretty late; the others have left already," he said. "Do you want something to eat?"

Remus tossed his head up and down; it was the easiest thing to communicate, even though the nodding gesture wasn't so natural for a wolf. He hopped down off the bed as Sirius got up to lead him down to the kitchen. The stairs were tricky—usually, even medicated, he just shut himself in somewhere when he was transformed and so now had very little experience with the obstacle—but his friend waited patiently for him at each landing. When they arrived at the bottom and entered the kitchen, Sirius made a plate of leftovers from dinner and warmed it with his wand. He was still strangely quiet, but he sat down on the floor so that Lupin could sit on his haunches face to face with him, and he cut the meat and potatoes into pieces and fed Remus with a fork.

* * *

Sirius spent the night on the sitting room again, and Lupin stood watch with occasional sniffing and napping. His wolf nose did come in useful at least once when he scented out some objects that had gotten Obfuscamela oil on them, rendering them impossible for the eye to notice but leaving a distinctive floral scent. Even when Sirius felt around where Lupin was sniffing and managed to pick them up, they couldn't fix their eyes on the things enough to identify them, so he just put them aside in a marked box to clean the oil off later.

The most words that were uttered all night came when Kreacher intruded, at first looking in from the doorway, but he slipped into the room when Sirius and Remus weren't looking and snuck close to them using the boxes for cover. His muttering started out very quiet, but soon the epithets aimed at the "filthy dog" became too loud and vulgar to ignore, and Sirius ordered him out of the room. There was no hiding Lupin's lycanthropy now, and Kreacher's "Lady" would obviously not have approved.

Molly's breakfast bell roused Remus from a nap; he lifted his head from his paws and pricked his ears at the sound, and he and Sirius picked themselves up and started toward the kitchen. No sooner had they left the sitting room, however, than Kreacher appeared again to shadow them, muttering the foulest verbal abuse toward Lupin and hovering threateningly close over him. Sirius had descended the first flight of stairs and Lupin had only taken about a third of them—climbing up the stairs as a wolf was fairly easy, but getting down them was hard—when Kreacher closed in so near to him that he didn't have room to maneuver, lost his footing, and half-tumbled down a few steps with a yipe.

Sirius whipped around. "Leave him alone!" he barked at Kreacher.

The house-elf straightened as much as his shrivelled little body would, and he bowed. "Kreacher obeys his Master," he said, and disappeared back into the fourth-floor hallway. Sirius started downward again with a disgusted frown.

Remus continued struggling down the stairs. Planting his front paws lower than the back ones made him feel like he was going to tumble, unless he did it so carefully as to be quite slow. He tried it backward and sideways, but the result was the same, and he heard the footsteps echoing further and further down—Sirius wasn't waiting for him this time until the very bottom, and having started from the fourth floor, this was going to take awhile...

He had almost reached the second landing when he heard a sharp whisper. "_Silencio. Mobililupus._" Suddenly he felt himself becoming weightless, and he pawed frantically at the stairs as he was lifted off them. Under the Silencing Charm, no sound came out when he tried to bark in alarm, and he slid dizzyingly through the air—like when Sirius had picked him up and awakened him from his dream. As he rose back upward tail-first and the stairway wheeled and descended below him, he was turned to see Kreacher standing there, leathery old arms upraised. "Master tells Kreacher leave plague-ridden dog alone. Kreacher leaves filthy animal alone..."

Lupin struggled and twisted, trying to see what was going on around him, and as Kreacher magically carried him into the fourth-floor hallway, he caught a glimpse over his shoulder and saw the broom closet standing open. Realizing what was going to happen, how Kreacher had warped Sirius's order, he tried as hard as he could to bark out loud and pawed toward the walls, the doors, anything he might be able to touch, but it was no use. Kreacher kept him Silenced and out of reach of all of those things, and like this, he couldn't cast a spell, couldn't even grip anything that might come to his paw...

Kreacher turned him over onto his back and floated him into the closet, then shut him inside. As soon as he was free to move, he leapt to paw at the doors, but an aura of force held him back from touching them—a reversed Imperturbable charm. Lupin knew that would also keep any sound he made from escaping, but it was only one-directional; he clearly heard the padlock on the door being fastened. Kreacher was quite literally leaving him alone, abandoning him in the solitary confinement of the closet.

The hallway outside fell silent. Although the closet was wide across the doors, it was so shallow that Lupin could barely turn around inside it—close and dark like those cells at the Ministry... No use being distressed, he told himself. He settled down on the floor with the ends of the broomhandles against his side and their bristled heads looming above. Unable to touch the doors, unable to use any magic, there was nothing to do but wait to be found.

Maybe they would immediately begin turning the house upside-down when he didn't arrive at breakfast right behind Sirius—or maybe they would assume that he had simply gone off on his own and curled up somewhere. Sirius probably didn't suspect how Kreacher had reinterpreted his command, so even if they did start searching, why should they imagine that he would be locked in a closet that he couldn't have gotten into himself? If they began searching the house, it was still a large manor, like a labyrinth; how long would it take them to get this far? Would he have to wait until someone wanted to use a broom? Could it be days or weeks until he was found? Even when he became human again, he would be stuck in here behind those Imperturbed doors without a wand. He tried to tell himself that it was very unlikely, but it was at least concievable that he could starve to death in here...

Every month when the moon waxed to full, his mind was full of how dangerous he was to others. He had never realised that the transformation could make him so vulnerable.

After some time, he heard foosteps come up near him, and he tried to bark at them, just hoping that it might get through, but he was still under the Silencing charm. The person went up to the attic; judging by the sound, they were tending to Buckbeak. Presently they left back down the stairs, utterly unaware of Lupin.

He had no way of measuring the duration and only knew that a long, miserable time passed as he waited there, listening for movement outside and struggling to stay calm, but a caustic broth of emotions bubbled just under the surface: terrified, trapped, lonely... Kreacher had put him here at the end of his waking hours, and those tensions further exhausted him, but he was only able to sleep in snatches and had unquiet dreams. In one he was again chasing the shadow with no person attached, and he got close enough to grab hold of it. It had no blood to bite through to and infect it, so he dared to clamp his jaws on it, but suddenly it ballooned up around his grip, enveloping his muzzle so that he couldn't breathe, flourishing outward until he was falling headlong into it like water. He struggled to get to the surface and leap free of it, but this time he was a wolf, not a fish—couldn't breathe—

He woke with a sneeze at the dry musty air of the closet. At least he heard the sneeze and knew that the Silencing Charm had worn off, but as he woke he had to convince himself that the closet doors weren't tight enough for him to use up the air here and suffocate. Even if they were, he knew it wouldn't do any good to let himself think so and panic, but nonetheless he resituated himself to lay with his nose right next to the biggest crack, between the bottom corners of the doors.

Hours crawled by and very gradually the air became cooler; the tiny ambient noise outside drifted toward evening sounds. The dumbwaiter bell rang for dinner, and still more time passed with hunger gnawing at his stomach. The whole day had gone by and no one had come...

The bell rang again, not just once but several times, very insistently. He heard Molly's voice echo up the dumbwaiter shaft, calling for him, and he howled in response, but of course she couldn't hear. Not long afterward, he heard her footsteps on the stairs, and she walked up and down the hall outside, looking into all the rooms and calling. "Remus? Remus Lupin?"

_Think of the closet! Think of the closet!_ He barked and wailed at her as loudly as he could and tried in vain to paw at the door, but soon he heard her departing down the stairs again, and he collapsed on the closet floor. He thought that if he'd been human at the time he might have wept, but as a wolf he just whimpered to himself.

Perhaps another hour or two passed. He had begun to fear that everyone had gone to bed, but then came more voices on the stairs, more footsteps in the hallway... It sounded like a lot of people, at least three or four, and it wasn't Sirius, Molly, and Bill.

"Professor Lupin? Professor Lupin...?"

He hadn't heard them for awhile, but he recognized the voices of some of the younger Weasleys—he could pick out Ron in particular—and Hermione Granger, who had been staying at the Burrow for the holiday, was with them. His heart leapt; Molly must be very determined to find him if she'd brought the rest of the family here to search!

He heard a couple of them come right up to the door. "I bet this must be the broom closet," Ron said. "If Sirius can just throw away a couple of 1400's, I wonder what else he's got in here..."

"Allow me," came one of the twins' voices. His _"Alohomora"_ rattled the doors but didn't open them. "Hm. Must be a password or something." He kept trying spells and the lock knocked dully at being handled.

Hermione protested. "I don't believe you! How can you be thinking of brooms when Professor Lupin's missing? We have to— Oh, hello. What's your name? ... I'm Hermione."

A little shuffle, then Kreacher's familiar coarse muttering. "...filthy little Mudblood hag..."

"Well, that's got kind of a ring to it," the other Weasley twin remarked. "What do you go by for short?"

"...blood-traitorous scum... ...filth... ...My Lady's House..."

"Cute, isn't he?" the second twin remarked.

"Oh, lay off. I don't imagine it's his fault," Hermione argued.

More feet on the stairs. "What are you kids doing up here?" came Molly's voice.

"Thought we'd check the broom closet, Mum," Ron answered.

"Now how in the world do you think he'd get in there? This is no time to be gawking at brooms! Not one of us is leaving this house until we find Remus!"

But Bill was right behind her. "Already checked most of the house, we had better open up the closet to be on the safe side." Lupin felt a surge of joy as Bill came toward him. "Budge over, George."

"I'm Fred."

"No, you're not; you might be able to pull that on Mum, but not on me."

"Blast."

"_Toujours Pur._" Only silence. The lock rattled again as Bill tugged at it. "Sirius!" Lupin heard him stride over to call down the dumbwaiter shaft. "Sirius, we need you up here! Fourth floor!"

Within minutes he arrived; when he spoke it was so soft that Lupin couldn't well understand him. "We can't get the broom closet open," Bill told him. "I thought maybe the lock was a family-only thing or something."

"It shouldn't be..." Sirius said. "_Toujours Pur._" Still nothing.

"The password's changed!" Bill exclaimed.

"**Kreacher!**" Sirius called; not the shout Remus might have expected, but a call in a booming voice. "**Kreacher, come here!**"

"Master calls for Kreacher...?"

"Open this."

"Kreacher cannot open, Master. Kreacher was given orders not to open."

"It doesn't matter what my parents told you about it. I'm your Master now. Open it."

"It was Master gave orders so Kreacher cannot open," the house-elf said, with a hint of vicious smugness in his voice. "Master said leave dog alone, so Kreacher must leave mangey animal alone, must not open."

A few voices gasped.

"_You mean you put Remus in the closet?_" Molly shouted. "**_He's been locked in there since this morning!_**"

Sirius spoke again in a firm, even tone more frightening than if he were shouting. "This supercedes my earlier instructions. Open these doors."

Just a slight pause, then Kreacher said the new password he'd given the lock—"_Most Exalted Ladyship, Mistress Estelle Marion Chandler Black_"—and the lock snapped open. A clattering of the latch, then the doors were flung wide and Lupin at last tumbled out in a rapture of gratitude, into the flood of light and fresh air.

Hermione dropped to her knees and threw her arms around his neck, burying her face in his thick fur. "Oh, Professor! Oh, thank goodness you're all right!" The boys hung back, but Molly and Ginny Weasley also rushed over and stroked his head and rubbed his ears, and he was so overjoyed to be free that he licked both of their hands and Hermione's face. Molly wiped her hands on her apron, but Ginny and Hermione giggled happily.

"Er, H- Hermione..." Ron started nervously.

"_Blimey!_" one of the twins drowned him out. "A _1001 Nights--_-do you _know_ how much those go for now?"

As the boys broke into chattering, Lupin turned his head this way and that and saw Sirius's dark velvet robe flicker past a narrow gap of view between the welcoming Weasleys—Sirius left down the stairs with Kreacher following close behind. Lupin twisted out of Ginny and Hermione's grasp and ran after them, brushed past Molly, and this time bounded down the stairs not caring if he lost his balance. Indeed he took a tumble onto the third floor landing and got to his four feet again just in time to see Kreacher disappear into the Master bedroom and the blue-starred door clack shut behind him. Remus threw himself at the door and scratched and yowled, but it had latched, and his paws couldn't grip the knob to turn it...

"I've told you not to hurt him before," he heard Sirius through the door. He should have been screaming at a time like this, but his voice was chillingly calm.

"Kreacher _left_ smelly dog, did not _hurt_ it."

"What I meant by 'leave him alone' was perfectly clear. You deliberately twisted my words."

"Oh, Master. Kreacher has been a very bad servant, Master."

It reminded Lupin so much of his dream, when Orion was questioning Meecha... He remembered Sirius there in the kitchen, even as he was tending Lupin's burns that Kreacher had caused: _"I have no intention of handling him the way my father would've..."_ But now he wasn't the same... Remus jumped up and pawed frantically against the door, seized the knob in his mouth and struggled to turn it. _No! Sirius, don't!_

"Remus, you need in there?"

He whipped around and found Molly standing over him. To answer her, he tossed his head violently up and down. _No time—!_ The extra second she took to put her hand under her apron and turn the wet doorknob with the cloth hurt him as if she were pulling the time out of his chest. That second could be the difference, could be too late... He heard the hiss of the sword being drawn.

The instant the door opened the slightest crack he rammed his nose into the gap, hurling himself through and sending it crashing open. Sirius stood with his back to the door, ready to strike the blow. Molly gasped at the sight of the upraised sword.

No time for anything else! Lupin sprang across the floor, brushing Sirius's leg in his flight then twisting sideways—the sword was coming down—as he slammed into Kreacher and knocked the house-elf clear. Remus went careening off-balance and splayed his paws to catch himself, but he had crossed the event horizon and could only cower on his belly, squeeze his eyes shut and hope that Sirius could stop in time...

The sword rang out against the floor, several feet away. Only then did Remus dare to open his eyes. Sirius was looking down on him, his face transfixed with shock and self-directed horror.

"**_Sirius Lucien Black, what in Merlin's name are you doing?_**" Molly cried.

He turned slowly, eyes to the floor. "Don't... I don't want to talk about it," he said, and with that he edged past her and out of the room.

Kreacher could be heard muttering from under a corner of the bed. "...Filthy, disgusting dog... vile, gutter-bred beast... Better if Master had killed it. Kreacher would rather mop up this animal's dirty polluted blood..."

Lupin rose and followed after Sirius, back up the stairs. They passed Bill and the others on the landing; "What happened? Sirius?" Hermione asked, but Sirius just walked past them without a word, wandered urgently into the sitting room, and shut the door softly behind him before anyone could follow.

Remus whined softly and pawed at the door with one foot. Hermione had followed them back up and she tried the knob for him, but it wouldn't open. When she looked down at Lupin questioningly, he swayed his head back and forth a little and lay down on the floor across the doorway, settling his head on his front legs; his ears drooped, and his brows were gathered up with worry.

Hermione knelt beside him and petted him with gentle strokes from his head down his back, but after a minute she froze and lifted her hand away. "Is it okay?" she asked. "That is, I don't want to insult you... Is it all right if I pet you, when you're...?" Without lifting his head, he shook it slightly up and down. Hermione began stroking him again. In all truth, it was a pleasant and soothing sensation, and he appreciated the caring gesture especially.

Most of the Weasleys were talking on the floor below, but Ron and Ginny came up beside their friend. "Is Sirius okay, do you think?" Ron asked.

"I don't know," Hermione said. "I think Professor Lupin's worried about him... Are you?"

Remus again nodded his head on his paws.

"Hermione, Ginny, Ron?" Molly called. "I don't know what else we can do here, and it's past your bedtime. We should all be getting home."

"Can't we stay, Mrs. Weasley?" Hermione called back. "I hate to just leave Sirius and Professor Lupin like this."

Molly looked out from the stairway and regarded the three of them gathered around Remus for a long moment. "All right, but don't any of you go wandering off from Mr. Lupin. Parts of this house can be very dangerous; I don't want you running off 'exploring' and getting hurt, understand me?"

"Yes, Mum." "Yes, Mrs. Weasley."

"I may be down in the kitchen for awhile, but if I'm not, there's Floo powder above the fireplace."

"We'll be okay, Mum," Ron assured her.

"You kids take care. Have a good night!"

"Can we stay, too, Mummy?" "Hmm?" came the twins' voices, mocking childish pleading with her as she went back down the stairs.

"No, you may not."

"Come on! It's not fair!" "Ronnie and Ginny get to!"

"They asked first."

The others' voices faded into silence, and although Lupin had a wolfishly-keen ear to the door, he didn't hear Sirius make a sound in the sitting room. _Please be all right..._

Ron, Hermione, and Ginny sat on the floor around him, at first quiet in shared concern, but soon they began chatting in hushed tones, about the brooms, about the upcoming term at school, about the OWLs, and about who they would have for a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher—"I don't suppose you'll be back, Professor?" He shook his head. They talked about missing Harry, wishing he could be there for the experiences they were sharing, how frustrating it was that they weren't allowed to even write to him about what was happening; Lupin wondered if preventing that was really necessary. Ginny asked Remus if he would keep a secret, and after he nodded, they talked about Hermione having used a Protean Charm to write their own messages on Chocolate Frog Cards without opening the packets—Lupin was duly impressed—but apparently it hadn't worked on the ones they'd sent for Harry's birthday, or else he hadn't opened them, because when he'd written his most recent letter, he obviously hadn't read them...

It all made Lupin rather nostalgiac for his own student days and summer holidays, when the Potters would come to Hogsmeade for shopping trips, and James and Sirius would visit him, and how one day was always enough to get into a good bit of youthful mischief...

After awhile, the lateness of the hour started getting the better of the children. Hermione and Ginny yawned frequently as they talked, and Ron dropped out of the conversation entirely and nodded off, leaning against the wall. Finally, Lupin picked himself up. He "talked" a few soft, short barks at the door, hoping that Sirius would understand something like "I'll still be close by if you need me," then walked away a few yards and turned back, to give the girls the idea to follow him.

They shook Ron awake and Lupin led the three of them down to the Blue Room, where they quickly got the idea and climbed into the three beds. He was still deeply worried about Sirius and wanted to go back upstairs, but Molly had left the children under his watch, and he wasn't about to abandon them, so instead he lay down in front of the hearth, under Arabella's tile.

For tonight, he would just have to trust Sirius to keep bearing up. _Please be all right, Padfoot. I don't blame you. I know it wasn't you. Please be all right..._

* * *

to be continued...

  



	8. Chapter 8, like a shadow

Molly sent Ron, Ginny, and Hermione back to the Burrow after breakfast the next morning. For Remus, she tore up toast and mashed it with his eggs so that he could eat it out of a bowl on the floor, garnished with a few sausage links and accompanied by a smaller bowl full of milk. He had been so concerned with Sirius that even after the whole day before trapped in the closet with no food, he hadn't thought to eat after he'd been rescued and was now so hungry that when Molly picked up his bowls intending to wash them, he followed after her and whined until she realised he wanted more. He finished off two helpings of the egg cereal and three bowls of milk, then bowed to her as the best way he could think of to say "thank you" before going upstairs, still licking egg yolk off his muzzle.

On the fourth floor, a breakfast plate Molly had taken up still lay outside the sitting room. Sirius obviously hadn't touched it; as Lupin's padded footsteps approached, a silvery lizard leapt up from eating the eggs, scurried under the edge of the plate, and shrank out of sight. Remus sniffed around the door; the human scent there was too cold for Sirius to have come out when he wouldn't have seen. He pawed the door and yowled a little, simply to let his friend know he was there, then curled up in the doorway to wait. At the least, by this time tomorrow he would be human again.

At midday, Molly sent lunch for them both up the dumbwaiter and then came upstairs to fetch the two large bowls of stew out for them. "Just threw some leftovers together in a pot," she apologized, since she was mainly concerned with preparing a great dinner for that evening when Arthur would be bringing Shacklebolt and Tonks. She knocked on the sitting room door and called for Sirius; getting no answer, she just left the stew, picked up the cold breakfast plate—the now-very-tiny lizard skittered away into another room—and took it back down the stairs with her, sighing and shaking her head.

Several minutes later, Remus at last heard the sound of someone moving inside the sitting room, and Sirius hesitantly emerged and took his food. Remus followed him down the hall as closely as possible without tripping him up, and after pausing for a moment—seemingly realising that Lupin would stay with him even at the cost of his own meal—he went back for the other bowl and carried both down to the master bedroom. Remus again wedged his nose into the first crack as the door opened, and he quickly slipped inside; he wasn't going to let himself be shut out this time.

Sirius ate slowly, then lay down, never saying a word. Even when Remus jumped up onto the mattress beside him, he didn't turn his head; he just lay still on his back and stared up into the canopy of the bed. His every breath seemed to carry a hint of a sigh.

Remus wished he could move the moon forward a day and be human again so that he could talk to Sirius, lay a hand on his shoulder... As a wolf, he couldn't speak, couldn't hold a wand or even a quill. Canine noises, movement, and touch were all he had to communicate with, and with his closest friend so clearly in pain, he had to do as much as he could. He crept up beside him and lay down with one paw over him, resting his head on Sirius's chest, just as Sirius had done as a dog the night he had carried Remus to bed in his Castle.

Sirius barely even glanced down at him. After several minutes of silence, Remus nuzzled forward a little and licked him gently over his cheeks and chin, which were again scratchy with whiskers. At that, Sirius rolled over, away from him, and buried his face in the pillow. Lupin snuggled up against his back, willfully holding himself back from whimpering, and counted the hours until he turned human again. Maybe sixteen now, maybe fifteen...

_This too shall pass_, he told himself. _He survived twelve years of Dementors; whatever this is, it can't be worse than them..._ But the truth was that Lupin was deeply afraid for him. On the surface, he looked better now than on that night in the Shrieking Shack when for Remus he had come back from the dead albeit looking the part, little more than skin and bones. Underneath, however, somehow the last two weeks seemed to have left him even more deeply damaged than the Sirius who had tried to claw past him to get to Wormtail, moreso than the Sirius who, so he'd heard, had asked Cornelius Fudge for a newspaper "because he missed doing the crossword."

The side of his head was nuzzled up to Sirius's shoulder, one ear just at the middle of his back. The gold braid on the robe felt scratchy against his cheek despite the cushion of fur, but even through the velvet, that ear could hear Sirius's breath, hear his heart beating. _Hold onto that. That's all you have to do. Just hold on to that and things will get better..._

For twelve years, Remus had gone on thinking that he was the only one left: James and Lily, Peter, and Sirius all gone... _Hold on, Padfoot, please... Don't leave me again..._

* * *

Remus fell asleep like that, laying against Sirius. He dreamed again of the shadow that had burgeoned and swallowed him when he grabbed hold of it, and again he struggled to move through it even as it threatened to drown him. Now not only the darkness enveloped him, but golden ropes wrapped around him, like an insect in a spider's web, and he realized that he wasn't fighting toward the surface. Indeed, he could look over his shoulder and see clear air; if he made for it, the shadow and the web would let him free, but deeper into the darkness was something glowing and precious, a heart beating, sending ripples through the darkness that washed warmth over him. He knew he had to get to it, that it was more important than the air, and he struggled deeper. The harder he fought, the more heavily the darkness pressed in on him, and the more tightly the golden filaments enwrapped him, but they couldn't stop him completely. _If I reach it, I defeat you! Even if you kill me, I win if I can reach..._ The battle became an endless moment: fighting with all his strength and inching forward, even as the dark water and shining chains piled more and more heavily upon him, until he knew that he would never be able to get free of them before he drowned, until he knew that he was going to die. His chest howled, but his fingers were nearly there...

The warm, pulsating light, so close he could feel its electric aura... Just one more inch, just one more breadth of a hair...

Sirius sat up in bed, upending Lupin's dream and spilling him out into wakefulness drenched in its heavy black ether. He had twisted onto his back in his sleep and now lay with his hind legs stretched sideways but his ears smushed into the featherbed and his front feet pawing the air. At the sound of Arthur Weasley's voice, he flipped himself over.

"...Hate to intrude like this, but they're at the Burrow now, and we wanted... Well, we thought it would be good if you were there in the kitchen when they came, and if you could be there as a dog. That is, meeting you might be kind of a shock you know, probably better to be able to explain it all before they have you standing in front of them..."

Sirius nodded and rose. "...Right..." After a moment, a more confused look passed over his face; was he having trouble transforming? Lupin hopped down from the bed, came up next to him and looked up at him. Sirius looked down and met his eyes, then finally—_pop—_turned into the great shaggy black dog, and the two of them followed Arthur down to the kitchen. Albus and Molly were already there, Albus magically setting the table while Molly fussed over laying out the food and taking inventory: Roast chickens, potatoes, gravy, peas, carrots, trifle ready on the sideboard, fresh bread, butter set out—"Should we have jam?"

"I'll fetch some when I go to get them," Arthur said.

He led Lupin and Sirius over to a large throw rug beside the fireplace and they took the invitation to settle down on it. Nearby was a bowl of water and a pan of chicken: a mix of giblets, bones, and loose meat. "Sorry about that," Molly said. "I just wanted it to really look like we have dogs..."

"Well, I believe that's everything set," Albus announced, looking around. He placed a loaf of bread on a plate and cast _"Portus"_ on it, then offered it to Arthur.

"I'll be back presently," Mr. Weasley said, taking the plate. He touched he loaf and blinked away, presumably to the Burrow to fetch the guests.

The scent of dinner was getting the better of Lupin, and he ate some of the loose chicken while they waited, but Sirius was again quiet and still, laying stretched out on the rug with his large black paws in front of him. Remus nudged the pan of chicken over right next to him, but he made no move toward it.

As Remus lay back down, he cast a glance over at Dumbledore. He had to admit that he didn't know what to do about Sirius's troubles now, and despite everything he still found himself nursing a childish hope that the Headmaster could sweep in and solve their problems just as he used to do. However, Albus was only watching for the others to arrive.

A few minutes after Arthur had left, a great _poof!_ sounded and a knot of over a half-dozen people appeared in the room, clustered tightly around the loaf of bread. Albus welcomed them and invited them all to sit at the table, and as the crowd broke up, Lupin could get a better look at them all. Arthur of course was back, and had brought Charlie—who set a jar of jam on the table as he sat down—and Bill. Emmeline Vance was there also, as was Dedalus Diggle—which must mean that Alastor was guarding the Department of Mysteries. The last three were people Lupin hadn't seen before. One of them was a petite witch with black hair and round, pink cheeks; from Arthur's description, this must be Hestia Jones, who worked in the Ministry's mailroom. That would make the other two the Aurors.

The young witch with the fair, heart-shaped face then had to be Nymphodora Tonks. She wore bluejeans and a popular T-shirt with a blowup of a Chocolate Frog card on it, and her hair was a burgundy chin-length flip. She had a ready smile and a twinkle in her eyes, and, knowing that she was related to Sirius, Lupin thought he could see some resemblance in the finely-sculpted angles of her face—not in her dainty nose or dewdrop eyes or pouty lips, but perhaps in the line of her jaw, and just here and there where he couldn't put a finger on it.

The man who was presumably Kingsley Shacklebolt stood tall and solid, with rich dark-chocolate skin. He wore a silver hoop in his right ear and no hair on his head, and overall cut a striking figure, despite a black-and-green vertically-striped robe that didn't suit him at all. As he went to take his seat at the table, he noticed Remus looking at him, and his dark, alert eyes widened. Lupin knew that his werewolf traits had been recognised, and he dipped his head graciously to greet Shacklebolt and show that he was properly-medicated and rational. The Auror seemed assured by the gesture and sat down without comment.

As the dinner began, Dumbledore of course led the conversation, telling the guests the entire story of how Voldemort had struck at the conclusion of the Triwizard Tournament and returned to power, killing Cedric Diggory and attacking Harry Potter, who barely escaped. He spoke of Fudge's refusal to believe the truth and the danger he was thus leading Wizardkind toward. The rest of the table was silent as he spoke; no one even began eating until he noticed them all staring grimly at him and invited them to start before Molly's hard work got cold.

Once the dinner began, the conversation spread. Molly and her sons were particularly good at drawing out the guests and encouraging them to speak their own minds. Hestia had initially wanted to think that Voldemort was gone for good, but the Ministry's insistence on it had at last become so desperate and fearful that she realised the pleasant illusion couldn't be true. Kingsley had been ordered to drop otherwise-promising Death Eater-related leads in both the investigation of the Department of Mysteries break-in and the hunt for Sirius Black, and he saw his duty as an Auror as going beyond fealty to his Ministry employers. Tonks chafed against the smear campaign directed at Harry; the Ministry and the Daily Prophet had sung a different tune in previous years when he'd done heroic things—she remembered his first-year rescue of the Philosopher's Stone and second-year slaying of the Basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets—but now that he was saying something they didn't like, they had turned on him, thinking that he could be discredited because of his youth. Her own girlish nose wrinkled as she said it.

"Although," Shacklebolt reminded her, "he was taken in by Sirius Black, Confunded into ranting that Black was innocent. No telling what _he_ could have planted in Potter's mind."

The black dog gave a snort.

"Sirius's case never came to trial," Dumbledore said, steepling his fingers. "On the surface, it seemed too clear-cut... Having been on the Wizengamot at the time, however, I must say that the story Harry and his friends told does not contradict any of the evidence, and it also matches precisely with the account Sirius himself gave the night he was briefly recaptured. It would be the first time I'd heard of a Confundus Charm resulting in three victims with the exact same, unshakeable, in-no-way-impossible story."

"Perhaps it wasn't a Confundus Charm he used. In any case, the notion of Peter Pettigrew having lived twelve years as a rat with a missing toe is far-fetched."

"Far-fetched, but not impossible, and in my years I have seen many far-fetched stories turn out to be true," Albus said. "Perhaps Sirius could have offered evidence to prove his claim. When we held our own Inquisition, we threw away the chance to ever know."

Remus smiled to see Dumbledore standing up for Sirius, but despite his momentary reaction, Sirius himself appeared unmoved.

Talk on various subjects continued through the meal—Molly got a round of commendations on her cooking, set off by Hestia and Dedalus—but the consensus held that matters of business should be resolved before dessert, specifically whether the guests would be inducted as full members of the Order. Obviously, they had satisfied themselves about Jones, Shacklebolt, and Tonks' trustworthiness before bringing them to their headquarters, "but," Dumbledore said, "as one final matter that must be seen to first, we have yet to introduce you to some of the members present here tonight. Arthur, if you would be so kind?"

"After Arthur told me that Mundungus Fletcher was a member of your Order, I doubt anything could shock me," Shacklebolt said. "And I already noticed that one of you is a werewolf."

Hestia gave a little gasp, but Charlie remarked "Good eye, Kingsley."

"Yes, you're quite right." Arthur rose, beckoned the guests up, and led them around to the throw rug in the corner. Lupin sat up to meet him, and Arthur rubbed him behind the shoulders. "This is Remus Lupin, who happens to be a... to have lycanthropy, yes."

"Professor Lupin," Kingsley said, "I should have guessed. I've heard quite a bit about you; all the reliable things have been good."

Hestia approached him, but hesitantly, and hung back as Tonks crouched down right next to him and looked him over with bright-eyed curiosity. Her eyes were rather like those of a child looking at an exotic creature in a zoo, but he didn't take offense, and indeed when she ducked to the side to try to see his profile, he obligingly turned his head. "Never met a werewolf in person before, not when they're changed, anyway," she said. "So he's safe?"

"He's taken the Wolfsbane Potion, which makes him safe for this Full Moon, yes."

"And with the potion, he's just like usual, only a wolf?"

Even as Arthur answered "Yes, that's my understanding," Lupin nodded his head. By the look on Tonks' face, he expected her to ask any moment now whether it was all right to pet him, but in the meantime, Hestia diffidently extended a hand. He wasn't sure what she expected, except that she was feeling him out; he sniffed without getting his nose too close, then bowed his head to her, and it seemed to help.

"But, well, Remus isn't... That is, he's not the one I thought you might..."

"He's not the shocker," Bill put in for his father.

"Oh?" Shacklebolt questioned.

Arthur stepped around Remus to where the black dog still lay flat on the floor, chin on his paws, and Arthur had to bend down quite low to give him an indicating rub around the ears. "Well, Kingsley Shacklebolt, this... This is Sirius Black."

Tonks whipped around to stare at him. Shacklebolt started back in disbelief, but for only a moment before he caught Arthur's earnest eyes. "You're not joking!"

"No, Arthur is quite serious." Dumbledore rose and swept around the table to come up beside them. "It's all true, Kingsley. Sirius Black is an unregistered Animagus, as was James Potter and as is Peter Pettigrew. Sirius was never in league with Voldemort—" Hestia shuddered at the name "—and was not the Potters' Secret-Keeper; they switched to Pettigrew at the last moment, hoping to misdirect the Death Eaters and not knowing that he was their spy. After the Potters' deaths, it was Sirius, not Peter, who went after the other mad with grief, and it was Peter who caused an explosion and killed Muggle bystanders. He cut off his finger and escaped as a rat, leaving Sirius to take the blame. ...And we all let him do it."

Shacklebolt had been dumbstruck for a second, but recovered before Albus finished. "What proof do you have?"

"Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger will all attest to having seen Pettigrew the night Sirius was captured and subsequently vanished from Hogwarts—as will Professor Lupin, when he is able to speak," Albus said. "Unfortunately, three students and a werewolf are not enough to clear Sirius's name before the Ministry, and in Remus's case, I thought it better not to put him in the position of testifying to what he saw. As the only adult witness and a werewolf, his word would only have incriminated him. You all know that he would not have recieved even-handed treatment from the Ministry."

"I might add," Arthur piped up, "Pettigrew was... Well, when he was posing as a rat, we... We had no idea, of course, and... ah... we kept him as a pet..." His face turned bright red as he said it. "I didn't see him turn human, but I can tell you we had what looked like a common rat, didn't seem magical at all, that had a toe missing on its front foot, and that we owned for something like ten or twelve years..."

"About three times as long as a garden-variety rat ought to live," Charlie admitted. By now, he, Bill, and Molly were also looking deeply embarassed.

"Mum always said she could never imagine Cousin Sirius as a Death Eater," Tonks offered.

"What about him?" Kingsley asked, motioning to the dog at his feet. Sirius still lay there without even looking up at him, as if he really were just a dog that didn't understand a word they said. "If I'm going to believe that this is Sirius Black, I need to be able to recognise him."

"He can resume his human form if it's safe for him to do so," Albus said, "and that is up to the three of you."

Tonks and Hestia nodded. "If he is innocent, he has nothing to fear from me," Shacklebolt said.

"Then Sirius, if you would?"

The black dog lifted his shoulders and stretched, then with a pop transformed again into Sirius Black as they would have expected to see him, tall and thin with unkempt black hair and a dark robe. Hestia jumped a little, but by the look on her face, she was already seeing the hollows around his eyes in a new light.

"Sirius Black?" Shacklebolt queried.

Sirius nodded, and shook Shacklebolt's hand languidly when it was offered.

"Wow, Cousin Sirius!" Tonks exclaimed. "You remember me, don't you? Andromeda's Little Nymph?"

"Of course I do."

"You'll have to excuse Sirius if he's a little quiet; he's been feeling under the weather lately," Molly put in. "Dessert, anyone?"

"Oh, yes, please!" Diggle said.

Molly started dishing up servings of trifle and passing them around, not forgetting to set a portion out for Remus. To Sirius's apparent surprise, Tonks took him by the arm and pulled him to a seat beside her, but he prodded his dessert halfheartedly, and even his cousin gave up trying to draw him into conversation as he turned from the table and stared off into space, in the general direction of the fireplace mantel.

Lupin found he didn't have the stomach for sweets either. He longed to be able to speak, to tell everyone, _Sirius isn't like this. This isn't our Sirius Black._ The true Sirius would never ignore his friends and guests—but now when Arthur needed him to confirm something, he practically had to shout to get Sirius's attention for even a nod. Of course, the true Sirius would never have thought of killing Kreacher, no matter what he had done. He wouldn't just be lurking silently around the house like a shadow...

_Like a shadow..._ His was turned away from Lupin as well, his hair was long enough to hide the back of his neck, and he was facing the fireplace in that nearly-black robe... Could it even be the same one? This robe no longer made Sirius look as if his features had been pasted onto someone else's picture. Remus realised that it was all so chillingly like Sirius's father in his dream, standing staring at the fireplace mantel, closed off even to a family row going on behind him... Sirius had said, after getting the news of his father's death, that he was always very withdrawn, always darkly silent, that it seemed he could never bring himself to express emotion short of killing a servant or coming to blows with his older son, that at times he merely haunted the house like a shadow...

Back then, Sirius had had difficulty finding much grief in his heart for his father's passing, but spent some time grappling with fears about how much of his father was in himself, and Moony and Prongs had assured him that no, he wasn't like that at all. Far from a quiet lurking shadow, their Padfoot was always forthright with his sharp, ready wit. His temper could at times be violent, but he would never abuse a defenseless creature like a house-elf or a child.

He was certainly not someone who would ever raise a wand to his head and...

Remus watched him closely, afraid of the moment when he would get up and leave the room, dreading the thought that he might walk out of a gathering without a word, without any overt sign that something was wrong. In his heart, he thanked Dumbledore, Shacklebolt, and Bill Weasley for staying and talking long into the night, clinging to the sensation that the party had not yet broken up and keeping Sirius obligated enough to remain there with them. Unfortunately, it couldn't last until morning. Shacklebolt finally shook the remaining hands around the table to take his leave, and Bill left with him, taking the Portkey back to the Burrow. Albus stood to see them off, and once they blinked away, Sirius finally rose.

"Sirius?" Albus brought him up short for a moment. "Is everything all right?"

He nodded wordlessly and continued out the door. Remus did his best with his canine face to give Dumbledore a look that said everything was not all right, but dared only a moment's pause before following on Sirius's heels, trying to think of anything he could do...

When they reached the master bedroom and he leapt up onto the bed beside Sirius, Remus nosed under the pillows where he had left his own worn night-robe, and as Sirius made to lay down, Remus pulled it out and tossed it across his lap. For a moment, he only looked confused, so Lupin carefully took the first clasp of the velvet robe in his teeth and tugged at it. The gold braid scratched, and the velvet caught at his nose and made him sneeze, but Sirius got the idea and took the clasp himself. "I get it... I don't understand it, but if it makes you happy," he said, and did indeed change into the offered garment.

The two of them settled into bed, and when Lupin lay against his friend's side, this time Sirius didn't turn away, but turned toward him and lay an arm over him. Comforted by that, Remus had fallen to drowsing when he heard Sirius take a sharp breath and noticed the tension in that arm. Clearly he was awake, and Remus raised his head and nuzzled his chin.

"I don't know what's wrong with me..." Sirius said in a strained whisper. "I suppose Albus was right after all. Dear Morgan, I don't want Harry to see me like this..."

Remus crept forward and licked Sirius's face gently; he felt the muscles squeezed tight under his tongue and tasted the salt of tears on his friend's nose. It made him ache with sympathy, but at the same time he was glad to hear Sirius's voice and taste his tears. They gave him such a feeling of hope that it felt like joy amid this pain.

* * *

to be continued...

  



	9. Chapter 9, how do you dare

As the sun rose the next morning and the darkness faded, Lupin felt that same something in his bones, pulling out this time, as though it were tethered to the blue night and being dragged away over the horizon. It was a painful, nervous ache, but much more welcome; even the excruciating seizure of the transformation itself was not preceded by the same measure of dread. When it came, he weathered the trauma and arrived panting in bed, as relieved to be human again as a shipwreck-survivor might be to have washed up on a beach. He lifted his arms and ran his fingers through his hair, basking in the sensation for a moment before rolling out of bed to dress.

"Welcome back," Sirius said blurrily. He was thoughtful enough not to open his eyes as Lupin pulled on his trousers and buttoned up his shirt, then climbed into bed again.

They lay facing each other. Sirius's eyebrows would still twitch downward as in worry, but his face was more open than it had been the day before, and Remus thought he was looking improved. Was it the effect of the borrowed night-robe? He knew that the clothes he had worn for so long had something of him in them, even to a magical degree...

_Sirius is ours, not yours_, his mind declared broadly toward the previous owners of the master bedroom. That night Sirius had run away with a black eye and appeared on the Potters' doorstep, he had decided he wasn't theirs. _No matter what you do, I won't let go of him..._

But at that, Remus realised that he'd begun believing his dream was true. It almost had to be. There was no way he could have known the password to the broom closet, and yet his dream had contained it accurately. The sword with which Sirius had nearly killed Kreacher... Even the black-green velvet robe Sirius had been wearing looked eerily like the one Orion had worn in his dream. He didn't know how he could have seen into the past, and yet...

Only one way to know, as awkward as it was... "Sirius?"

"Mm?"

"There's something I must tell you. The second night we stayed here, after you carried me in to bed, I had a strange dream..."

"Mm."

"I dreamt that I was here in this house, but years ago, when you were young and lived here..." He went on to describe the dream as best he could: Regulus's temper tantrum, Estelle's suicide threat, Orion killing Meecha the house-elf, Sirius's laughter at his father turning on him with the bloody sword. Willfully keeping his voice clear, he even told how Sirius's dream-self had poured himself a strong drink and come to blows with his father. Then the basket of food, Kreacher's refusal to open the broom closet, Mrs. Black's all-too-obvious password, and finally dream-Sirius going back to his room to dress and packing precious items from the drawer of his wardrobe where they had found the boggart.

Sirius frowned and knitted his brows as Remus related the dream, but even when the story was finished, he said nothing. Remus waited a long time, but finally heard a slight snore in Sirius's breath that meant he had fallen asleep again.

Nonetheless, talking about the dream only made Lupin think about it more, and the more he considered, the more he realised it had to be true—or if not strictly true, at least it had to be a reliable map of some kind. It had resonated too clearly with too many events of the last few weeks.

His scholarly mind set to working on the connections, and he found he couldn't sleep, so he sat up against the headboard to think. Sirius had described his father as withdrawn and silent, words which precisely described the mood that had come over Sirius. In the dream, Orion Black had borne out that description, cold and calm short of killing his house-elf or striking his son, and after Lupin had been rescued from the closet—the closet with the same password in the dream and in reality—Sirius had been frighteningly calm short of trying to kill Kreacher. Orion had turned his back and avoided everyone's eyes in any gathering, just as Sirius had the night before...

But why? Sirius had never acted like this, no matter how bad things were. Not even after Azkaban. Not even when James' family had been killed by Voldemort—Sirius had stayed with them enough years that he thought of them as his family too, and had in all truth been as deeply hurt by the loss as James, but he hadn't been withdrawn like this. Indeed, once past his first flash of rage at their killers, he had put his best effort into the usual campaign of quips and pranks to keep everyone's spirits up, despite the occasional cry on Moony's shoulder in private.

What could make him like this? What could drive him to solitary despair where Dementors had failed to do so? What could—as Sirius had feared after the news of Orion's suicide—finally turn him into his father?

Sitting up in bed, Lupin's head was high enough that he could see over the edge of the mattress where the velvet-and-gold-braid robe lay on the floor. _Impossible_, he thought, that such a powerful curse could have escaped Alastor's incisive eye...

_Research._ Quite probably, he now thought, Sirius's dark mood wasn't simply natural. There was more to know here, and finding it out was the first step toward getting the better of it. He would be taking watch at the Department of Mysteries tonight; he could go early and visit the Ministry's Archives, where they had Daily Prophets dating back to 1402...

But if he was going to do that, he needed to use the meantime to get some sleep.

* * *

After the dinner last night, Molly was thoughtful enough to let Sirius and Lupin sleep that morning, and even came upstairs and peeked in to see if they were awake at lunchtime rather than ringing the bell. Lupin woke up at the sound of the door and told her he would be down presently.

He put on his shoes and sweater, then followed her down to the kitchen where he was glad to note that Alastor had already brought the Invisibility Cloak by. Molly was the only other person there; she had made loose chicken sandwiches and tried to engage him in conversation once she had him by himself. Someone ought to have a few words with Sirius, she said, about his behavior at dinner the previous night. She knew he was in a mood, but that was no excuse for such behavior around company.

Lupin, however, was in a hurry to get back upstairs, so he only tried his best to politely assure her that he was doing what he could about it before he excused himself and took a tray of sandwiches and tea for two back upstairs, with the Invisibility Cloak over his arm.

Sirius was awake when he got back and was for the most part talkative enough, although he sat propped with his pillows piled against the headboard as if he had taken to bed in illness, and he remained distraught as he had been the previous night, pausing now and then and touching his face as if trying to hold back attacks of emotion.

When he made to give the nightrobe back, Remus stopped him and insisted that it was no trouble. "Besides," he made certain to say, "I'd really prefer that you didn't wear your father's clothes. Cursed or not, I don't think they're good for you."

"I wish I had something else _to_ wear," he said ruefully.

Lupin deeply wished that Kreacher hadn't thrown away Sirius's old prison robes. _Was that why he did it?_ "I'll talk to the others; I'm certain we can find some things. Not much perhaps, but better than anything from here. For today, you can borrow mine."

"Moony, I can't take your robe," Sirius protested.

"I know it isn't much to look at, but—"

"It's not that—it's _yours_. I can't go begging from you when... Well, we both know you haven't got one to spare."

"I'll be leaving it anyway," Lupin said. "I'd like to stop in at the Archives, so I ought to take the Visitor Entrance to the Ministry. I'll blend in a lot better on the street like this, and it does look beautiful outside."

"Going early?" Sirius asked dejectedly.

"Yes... My regular job doesn't pay much, but I hate to neglect it completely," he replied, referring to the scholarly books he wrote and then had to sell under the table to be printed in others' names—publishing houses for such work preferred not to deal with werewolves. "...But I don't have anyone to meet after watch this time, so I'll be back bright and early in the morning, and I'll be looking to find you here waiting for me." He looked Sirius directly in the eyes and said it very kindly.

"You might find me still _right_ here," he lamented, leaning back into his piled pillows. "Or goodness knows, I might find the energy to do something _slightly_ useful..."

"Don't worry about a thing," Lupin insisted, finishing his tea. "You haven't been well lately; whether it's in your body or your mind, the most important thing now is to look after yourself. Your health is worth more than this entire house, much less any little job you might get done before you're feeling better."

Sirius nodded and even showed him a little tight smile.

"Just relax and take care," Lupin said, squeezing his shoulder. "I'll be back in the morning."

When he went downstairs, he paused on the last landing. Sirius hadn't been keen on borrowing his robe, so it was only a stopgap for today, if that, and otherwise there really was nothing else for him to wear... Since he needed another arrangement as quickly as possible, Remus took out his wand and concentrated on sending a messenger to Dumbledore, saying that, although he knew how petty it would sound, it was imperative to find Sirius other clothes with all possible haste, and to get the word to the rest of the Order to check if they had any to spare.

Unfortunately, when he swung his wand and sent the silver messenger flying off toward Dumbledore, it happened to pass right through Estelle Black's portrait.

"**_SIRIUS LUCIEN BLACK!_** TRAITOROUS INGRATEFUL SWINE! HOW DO YOU DARE TO LIVE AND BREATHE WHILE YOUR FATHER ROTS IN HIS GRAVE BECAUSE OF **YOU! . . .**"

Her shrieks would have sent Remus fleeing into the kitchen, but he had to hide the Invisibility Cloak in his Castle and there wasn't room to set it up downstairs, so he ran a little down the foyer and fumbled with the pocket-tin. Assailed by Mrs. Black's screaming, he dropped one of the matches on the floor and had to stamp it out with his foot before getting it right on the second try. Once inside, he tucked the cloak between two of his old quilts, so that even if Ministry Security found his house and searched inside, they would have to go through the bedclothes layer by layer before they found it. The rough walls muffled Mrs. Black's din surprisingly well, so he sat on the edge of his small bed and waited until she had quieted down before taking leave of Molly and departing through the kitchen fireplace to the Leaky Cauldron.

From there it was perhaps a half-hour's walk to the Ministry of Magic, but that wasn't really so much, and he didn't have money for a fare. When he at last reached the dilapidated telephone box, he checked quickly to see that no one was looking before dialing, then told the Welcome Voice that he was there for research in the Archives.

The coin slot of the phone spat out what at first seemed to be a malfunction of two badges, but when he took it, he found that it was no mistake. There was the usual silver square with his name and business—"Remus Lupin: Archives Research"—and then dangling from it by a scrap of wide ribbon was a circular piece even larger than the badge itself, a fluorescent white round suggestive of a full moon, with a red "W" emblazoned on it.

Of course, he remembered, one of that Umbridge person's many projects: Ministry visitors' names were now checked against the Werewolf Registry, and those on it were clearly identified. Nothing to do... He sighed and pinned the badge—with associated stigma—to his vest as the phone box descended. After all, it was he who had inspired all these measures, when it had come out that a werewolf was secretly teaching at Hogwarts. Yet more reason he couldn't accept Albus's offer now, no matter how much he would love to teach again...

He arrived in the atrium and started across it to the security desk. Many of the people he passed visibly noticed the "Werewolf" badge and nervously fled from his path. It seemed the figures standing tall at the center of the Fountain of Magical Brethren were the only wizard and witch who didn't react to it, and that only because they didn't deign to look down at him. The previously bored-looking security wizard gave a start as he approached and passed the usual golden detector-rod over him with nervous attention. It picked up his wand, of course, but also his Castle, and the guard weighed both items on a magical scale.

The wand registered "unicorn hair core, nine-and-a-half inches, in use twenty-four years."

"My, has it been that long?"

The guard looked at him sharply. "Has it? That is right, isn't it?"

"Yes..."

And the Castle thankfully registered only the expected enchantments for such a device. The scale then spat out the usual registration slip for the guard to keep, and also a claim check that he handed to Lupin, telling him he would have to present it to get his wand and home back. That was an inconvenient surprise; it wasn't normal procedure for visitors' property to be kept at the security desk that way, but Remus supposed there was nothing to do but accept it and move on—and hope the Ministry wouldn't take the opportunity to search his house in his absence.

Even with all of that done, the guard stopped him when he tried to go on and asked for more details about his business there, what he wanted to research. He wanted to keep his options open while maintaining privacy about what he was looking for, and answered that he only wanted to browse, but unfortunately this launched him into a frustrating debate with the guard as to whether "browsing" could be considered "research"...

"I'm in an early phase of reasearch, trying to choose my next project."

"Couldn't you figure that out first and then come?"

"Not properly, no..."

And so forth. Mentioning that he was a Professor brought a predictable warning that it was now illegal for a werewolf to work with minors, and Lupin had to assure the guard that he knew the law and wasn't a teacher. As a line of other visitors collected behind him—hesitantly and at some distance—his patience began to wear thin, but he knew that even letting an edge creep into his voice would only make things worse...

The guard finally decided that he couldn't hold up the line anymore, sat Lupin in a chair, and called up someone from the Archives. It took most of an hour for that witch to arrive. Assuring Lupin that this was the result of no small debate, she conducted him not to the main collection area—where he just glimpsed other patrons leafing freely through the beautiful expanses of newspapers hanging in single file—but to an empty meeting room, where he was told that an attendant would come and fetch any records for him that he wanted, but that he was not to leave the room.

As Remus settled in to wait for the promised attendant, he had to wonder why he had even bothered coming, but then, he had to know: anything he could find about Sirius's house, his family, anything that might tell him what was happening and what to do about it. As a prominent pureblood name, the Blacks had been mentioned frequently in the news until the war had practically wiped them out, but Lupin knew it would be unwise to tip his hand by directly requesting anything related to them, and Orion and Regulus's deaths were the only applicable events that he could fix a date to, since Sirius's family had managed to keep his flight to the Potters' out of the papers.

No, the question wasn't why had he had bothered to come, but why he couldn't just leaf through the collections like an ordinary person and look for what he wanted without having to explain himself to anyone. The full moon had just passed; he would be human for weeks to come. Did they think he would fly off his head at any moment and bite someone? _If you do_, Padfoot-and-Prongs-in-his-head remarked acidly, _it'll be because they wouldn't just let you look up what you wanted. Nobody gets between Moony and his books without ending up sorry..._

When the attendant finally arrived, only peeking his head in the door to ask what his sequestered patron wanted to see, Lupin said that he needed to look through the Daily Prophets for December of 1976; that was the month Orion Black had died. The attendant left and, after another agonizingly-long wait, came back with one paper, December 1st. He lay it down on the table, then whisked out before Lupin could object that he needed to look through the entire month and doing it one day at a time would take much too long. Sirius's father had died during Christmas Holiday, which wouldn't have even started yet on the first of the month, but he leafed through the paper anyway, just in case it might contain something useful, or in case the attendant might be back with another one presently.

No such luck. He waited again, even rapped on the door from the inside, but it was some time before the attendant returned, and it took some arguing on Lupin's part for him to agree to bring more than one paper at a time. Lupin asked for ones closer to Christmas; the papers that returned this time, however—December 25th through 27th—didn't contain what he needed, and when the attendant came back again, he had run out of time. The Ministry's offices would be closing soon enough that he had to leave now to retrieve his belongings from the security desk—and to be ready in time for guard duty.

Once Remus had his wand and Castle back—to his relief without a word about the Invisibility Cloak—he crossed the atrium back to the lift and was carried up to the street. He had come in the early afternoon, and now the sky had grown dusky while he tried in vain to look up a single article that should by all rights have taken him minutes to find. The Welcome Voice instructed him to have a good day and to dispose of his visitors' badge in the bin outside and to the right. Once out of the telephone box, he took off the badge with the attached "W" Moon, and he succumbed to the temptation to tear it in two and throw it violently into the bin before setting off down the street for somewhere he could expand the house and retrieve the cloak.

_You tried to be their good boy. They had more chance than they deserved._ Padfoot and Prongs were back to talk as he went. After half a day wasted by quibbling quills standing between him and helping his best friend in need, Moony was now more than willing to listen.

* * *

_After all, if Mundungus Fletcher can bring it off, surely you can_, said that encouraging voice as Remus slipped through the plain black door into the Department of Mysteries. Alastor's briefing had included what to expect inside—in case it should become necessary to pursue an intruder—so before closing the door, he cast _"Flagrate"_ and drew an upward-pointing angle of orange flame on it, which glowed brightly against the blue candles lighting the round room. As soon as the door thudded softly shut, the circular outer wall with its many doors began to spin around, but when it came to rest, the fiery arrow was still very visible, and Lupin crossed to it and started around, trying doors one by one.

Through the first door on the right, he glimpsed a huge tank of green liquid with pearly objects floating about in it; he'd been told that these were human brains and didn't look long enough to identify them as such personally, only cast _"Stigmatis"_ to place a red spot on the door, then closed it again. Again the room spun around, and this time ended with the red-spot door nearly opposite the glowing arrow. The door now just to the right of the exit was locked and would not open, and the one next to that offered a view of a conical tiered pit leading down to an archway and The Veil—Remus hastily marked that door and slammed it shut. The mere sight of that room made his heart pound dizzyingly as the outer wall spun around again, but Padfoot and Prongs found the sensation delicious.

The fourth door he tried was at last the one filled with glittering light and _clocks_—covering every inch of the wall and every surface of the many desks standing around the room. He picked his way down the narrow clear path amid such a chorus of ticks and tocks and sighing hourglass-sand that the sound was broad and soothing as gentle ocean waves. At the end of the room and to the side he found what he needed: the glass-doored case of Time-Turners. He carefully opened it, took a single golden one-hour glass, and fastened its attached chain around his neck before closing up the cabinet and leaving. Once the Department of Mysteries had stopped spinning again, he walked around and cast _"Absolutia"_ to wipe clean the doors he had marked with red spots, then opened the one with the burning arrow—yes, it led back out into the rest of the Ministry—and erased the fiery mark with a _"Nox"_ before passing through and shutting the door behind him.

He checked Alastor's precisely-calibrated watch and memorised the time—eight forty-three—before crossing to the lift and taking it up to the level where the Archives were located. When he got there, their glass panel doors were locked and didn't open with a simple _Alohomora_; apparently there was a key or a password. Looking around for what to do next—vanish the glass?—he saw that these doors opened outward toward their hinges, which were right there within reach. Concentrating carefully on the hinge-pins, he raised his wand to them one by one. _"Cardowasi."_ They pulled out and set themselves lightly on the floor, and then he was able to pull the hinge-edge forward. The doors still wouldn't come apart where they were latched, but he could pivot them both together, opening them as if they were one double-wide door, enough to slip through.

_"Lumos."_ As Lupin entered the main Hall of Archives, the light from his wand revealed again the endless matrix of hanging newspapers; so much collected history and knowledge was, to him, as breathtaking a sight as anything to be found in the Department of Mysteries. Now that there were no werewolf-fearing beaurocrats in the way, he quickly flitted along the rows until he came to 1976 and followed it down to December.

He took his illuminating wand in his mouth to free both his hands—a bad habit learned from Padfoot and Prongs back in school; he didn't remember which of them had picked it up from the other one—started from Christmas, and worked backward. After shuffling through only four papers, he found it: December 21st, 1976. While not the headline, Orion Black's death had made the front page.

He carried the paper to a nearby table to read by the wand-light. Not much detail in the front page fragment, but it ended "more on pg. Þ7," so he leafed through the numbered corners until he found that and spread it open. The article took half the page, with text flanking a photograph of Orion Black; its caption noted that it had been taken some years before. Still, it had been years since Lupin had seen an image of Sirius's father, except in his dream—but this photo looked exactly like the dream, and indeed Orion even preferred to face away from the reader.

The text—the by-line read "Daily Prophet Society Reporter Rita Skeeter"—was every bit as crassly romanticised as he remembered, describing in overwrought flourishes of prose every unsettling detail: the moment of horror as the name burned black on the family tapestry, which guests fled the house or left awkwardly, which stood stunned in the drawing room, and which joined Regulus in looking for his father, as Estelle collapsed into hysterics. And of course, what the searchers found: Orion Black lay dead on the floor in the upstairs sitting room, just in front of the great bay window overlooking the street, apparently killed by a burst of force from his own wand through his head. The heavy velvet draperies on the window, which those who knew the Blacks said always remained closed, had been drawn aside in a crack perhaps a foot wide, enough to admit a shaft of starlight, which stood reflected in the black-ruby pool of blood. A more merciful capsule biography followed: Orion Edward Black, Graduated Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry 1953, alumnus of Slytherin House; married Estelle Marion Chandler, October 13th, 1958...

It continued onto the next page, where Lupin found another photograph, this one of a crowd of richly-robed witches and wizards gathered in the drawing room of the Black House, which was richly dressed with near-black draperies of green and purple and accents of white pearl-frosted holly. Even at a first glance, Lupin recognised several faces in the crowd, including the chilling images of persons now deceased: Regulus Black, then aged fourteen, who would be dead in a year-and-a-half; Bartimius Crouch together with his wife and son; Justinian Wormwood, the round and blustery Head of Slytherin House and Divination Professor of Lupin's Hogwarts days, who had been killed the following summer for refusing to prophecy for Voldemort...

"Orion Black can be seen in this photograph," the caption read, "taken earlier on the evening of his tragic death." Looking back to the image, Sirius's father was still difficult to find; Lupin had to search carefully and coax a few affronted socialites aside before he located him in an armchair with Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy standing on either side. Lucius cast only a disdainful glance toward the camera and spoke to Orion, who at most nodded slowly, and Narcissa, standing upstage of the chair, had to put in now and again to maintain the illusion of a conversation. He saw her call toward the buffet, and a towel-tunicked house-elf—was it Kreacher?—brought a tray of champagne-flutes. As Narcissa stepped toward the tray to take a glass, the bustled skirts of her robe passed from in front of the armchair, giving for the first time an unobstructed view of Mr. Black sitting there—

Remus cried out aloud in shock; he had still been holding his wand in his mouth to read by its light, and first his voice and then the clatter of the wand on the table rang out in the still silence. Snatching it up, he held it over the photograph again, although that one glance had been enough—black-green velvet with swirls of couched gold braid... Actually seeing the image of Orion in that robe plunged the certainty through him like a blade: it was the same one from his dream, the same one Sirius had been wearing... In a photograph taken that day—that would make it the same one as in that awful scene, the black-ruby pool reflecting starlight from the window... After such a horror, why would the family keep that blood-soaked robe? Unless...

His mind echoed Estelle's shrieks from her portrait. _"SIRIUS LUCIEN BLACK! . . . HOW DO YOU DARE TO LIVE AND BREATHE WHILE YOUR FATHER——!"_

Remus thrust his hand into the right pocket of the Invisibility Cloak and seized the Portkey-coin. In a dizzy rush, the Ministry tore away and the kitchen of the Black House snapped into place around him. Molly and Bill Weasley were there, and after a moment of surprise as they looked for the source of the sound, he remembered to pull off the cloak.

Molly started. "Remus, what's—?"

"_Where is Sirius?_"

"He went upstairs," Bill said. "Mum was laying into him about dinner yesterday and he just—"

_—Left without a word._ Remus didn't even dare wait for him to finish the sentence. "**_What was he wearing?_**"

"Well, I don't know," Molly admitted. "I wasn't really—"

_I can see for myself_, he realized, and bolted out of the kitchen and up the stairs. He held onto the Invisibility Cloak in his fist until its flying folds struck and caught the portrait's curtains, and it fell on the steps as he sprinted up them with Sirius's mother screaming after him.

"**_SIRIUS LUCIEN BLACK! I ALWAYS KNEW YOU'D COME TO A BAD END! . . ._**"

Third floor, Remus threw himself at the door of the master bedroom and slammed it open. His old patched robe lay on the bed and he snatched it up, scanning the room in an instant. His nightclothes were there across the pillows; Mr. Black's velvet robe was gone from the floor.

He turned again and flew up the stairway. _Sirius, no! Wait for me—let me be in time!_ Fourth floor, the sitting room door—it was closing before his eyes under its own power, and he raced toward it, one hand stretching forward to stop it. In a flash he had that hand through the gap, but the door slammed on his arm and wouldn't open though he pushed against it as hard as he could. Sirius was there in the room—he could feel it, although he couldn't see. He was standing in front of the window...

**_I won't let you stop me!_** With a burst of strength and will, Remus thrust his arm downward along the portal's jaws, across the tooth of its latch, which tore his flesh and stained the jamb with his flowing blood. He slammed his shoulder against the door and this time broke through into the room.

Sirius stood in front of the window, seemingly unable to see or hear Remus running toward him shouting his name. He was taking a deep breath, raising a wand to his head...

"**_SIRIUS, NO!_**" Remus reached him, now beyond thinking, acting on instinct. His shabby old robe was still flying behind him from his fist, and he swept it forward and threw it over Sirius's head, seizing him around the chest and at the same moment by the wrist, shoving it forward, pushing the wand tip clear—

* * *

Molly followed Bill up to the second floor landing, her hands clapped over her ears against Mrs. Black's screams. When they had begun, Bill had started after Remus, ascending the stairs cautiously with a watchful eye toward what might be waiting above. "WHAT'S HAPPENING?" she yelled; she could barely hear it herself.

"I DON'T KNOW!" Bill shouted back. "BUT IF LUPIN'S THAT SCARED, IT HAS TO BE—"

**_-BANG!-_**

Molly cried out at the sound from upstairs, clearly audible even above the shrieking portrait. She tried to clap her hands to her mouth and to her ears at the same time and ended with her fingers splayed wide against her cheeks.

Bill sprinted up the stairs toward the sound, but next thing, Molly heard footsteps below, and turned to find him coming up toward her again as if from the kitchen. They met each other's eyes in shock and started running together, but found themselves in a neverending loop. The instant they started upward from the drawing room, it mysteriously transposed them onto the kitchen stair, and at every other landing they were confronted with Estelle Black's howling image.

"_SHAME OF MY FLESH! YOU BROUGHT MY NAME DOWN IN DISGRACE! **THE BLOOD YOU BETRAYED WILL STAIN THE FLOOR OF THIS HOUSE!**_"

"MUM, I'VE GOT AN IDEA!" Bill shouted into her ear. "YOU KEEP TRYING!" With that he dashed up the stairs again and disappeared into the drawing room.

Molly had just begun to follow him when she froze at the bizarre sound of Estelle Black gasping in shock. "**_YOOOU! _**FILTH! MONGREL! INTERLOPING CUR! **HOW DARE YOU MEDDLE IN THE AFFAIRS OF MY NOBLE FAMILY!**"

_Remus?_

"_LET GO IF YOU VALUE YOUR PESTILENT HIDE! GUTTER-SIRED DOG! **LET GO OR I'LL KILL YOU!**_"

Molly cried out aloud. "REMUS!"

* * *

to be concluded...

  



	10. Chapter 10, I won't let you go

Remus had redirected the burst of sparks in time; he wrenched Sirius's hand until the wand fell from it, then seized him around the chest, pinning his arms to his sides. With Lupin's robe hooding him, he stumbled back in confusion. The two of them fell together, and Remus landed on his knees, still holding Sirius from behind. He reached around as far as he could, crushing his cheek against Sirius's back, squeezing his eyes shut with effort, and grasped one of the closures of the velvet robe. "_Sirius! Take the robe off!_"

He fought the clasp but couldn't unfasten it; the gold braid of the knot only swelled and tightened under his fingers, and when he tried to pull the fabric and tear it open, its strands scratched and bit into him---they had tangled around his hands like spider-web. "_Sirius, the robe---**ah!**_" As he tried to shout, cloth crept into his mouth. He opened his eyes; the braid had entrapped him here as well, looped around his face and neck, and it was pulling him in as the velvet began to swallow him with its dry liquid darkness. It closed around his head; it filled his mouth and choked him, stifling his cries. It sealed him off from every outside sound, except Mrs. Black's screams echoing up from the entry hall...

"_THE BLOOD YOU BETRAYED WILL STAIN THE FLOOR OF THIS HOUSE!_"

_No! I won't let you!_ he cried in his mind, even as his chest heaved against the blackness and could not draw air; he couldn't breathe---couldn't let go--- _Sirius is ours, not yours! I won't let you take him!_

The harder he fought, the more tightly the gold braid wrapped his hands and the more deeply it pulled him into the smothering velvet. Sirius struggled in his arms. Attacking the fastenings of the robe was futile; they had snarled themselves into knots the size of fists, even as Lupin's bursting lungs seized his fingers up into useless claws. He was drowning; his heart pounded in his head. _Somebody help me!_

Then suddenly, without knowing how but certainly, he knew that he could get free if he stopped fighting the curse. If he gave up, it would let him go---but he couldn't give up, and he knew just as surely that if he didn't, he could win. He could save Sirius if he fought for it absolutely, if he was willing to give any price. _I won't give up on you! I won't let them have you!_

But if he didn't let go, he couldn't get free, couldn't breathe---his body burned; his chest was in cinders--- _I'm going to die! No, please, not like this! Someone help me!_

And yet through even that pain and fear, even stronger: **_I won't let you take him!_** His twelve years alone, Harry's years as an orphan... _I won't let you take him away from us! Not again!_

Even if it's a life you have to have... I won't let you take him...

"_YOOOU! FILTH! MONGREL! **HOW DARE YOU---!**_" Estelle Black howled in his ears louder than ever. "_LET GO! . . . **LET GO OR I'LL KILL YOU!**_"

__

Remus could barely even feel the knots in his hands anymore, but still he clawed at them blindly, with all his vanishing strength...

__

Sirius, I'm sorry... You are my family. I won't let you go...

* * *

Bill burst into the drawing room, sprinted to the dumbwaiter and threw it open. "Second floor!" he commanded; the car slid into place, and he wedged himself inside. With any luck, whoever laid the curse wouldn't have thought of this...

"Fourth floor!" He was carried upward with a metallic rumble, and came to rest in the dark. "_Alohomora!_" The door slid open with a hiss, and Bill threw himself over and tumbled out, rolling easily to his feet. Yes! This was the fourth floor hallway; the sitting room door stood ajar. As he dashed toward it, he saw the latch stained with blood, but nonetheless threw it open---

"**_Great Merlin's Rock!_**" he cried. Even in years as a cursebreaker Bill had never encountered such a sight. He could barely see Lupin or Sirius; the scene in front of the sitting room window looked more like a battle between their disembodied clothes. Lupin held Sirius from behind, pinning his arms to his sides, and Sirius struggled thus hindered to pull aside Lupin's old mended robe, which was draped over both of them---but where its folds fell over Sirius's back, the shape of Lupin that they revealed melted the two of them together at the shoulders. It looked like Remus had no head, and his body struggled sickeningly---as if he couldn't breathe! Bill dashed across the room and skirted around the two of them. Where could he take hold? How could he come at the curse without being sucked into it himself, as Lupin apparently had been?

As he came in front of them, he caught a glimpse of Lupin's hands amid the struggling cloth; one of his arms was bleeding freely. The gold braid of Sirius's robe had bound him thickly as ships' rigging, and still more glittering fibers snaked around his arms like living things even as they shrank from the touch of his blood.

---Lupin had asked them what Sirius was wearing! It was that robe! It was the crux of the curse; Remus had tried to pull it off of Sirius---_was still trying_ to pull it off---and it was retaliating against him.

Just as Bill realised it, Sirius managed at last to get hold of the shabby robe over his head and pulled it forward by a sleeve, enough that it fell away, dragging wild strands of his hair forward over his face. Bill watched as Sirius looked down at it, at the sleeve in his hands with its layers of patches on the elbow, then down further to find Lupin's hands against his chest, still struggling helplessly with the golden closures. Through the tangled mass of braid, one could just see through here and there to Remus's skin, his fingers turning purple, the nails powdery blue---

"**_NO!_**" Sirius screamed. His hands flew to the clasps of the robe, over Lupin's hands, and at his touch the snaking golden strands melted back into the garment's decoration. The closures disentangled and popped open as he pulled at them in a panic. He leapt to his feet, tore the robe off his back, and flung it aside, spilling Lupin to the floor free of it.

Not even seeming to notice that he was left standing in only his shoes and underpants, Sirius dropped to his knees and shook Lupin by the shoulders, hauled him up from the floor in his arms and shook him again and slapped his cheek. "**_REMUS! MOONY! Say something!_**"

Remus panted for breath and coughed weakly. At the same time, Bill heard footsteps outside, and his mother dashed into the room.

"Oh, Morgan... _Moony, are you all right?_" Sirius pleaded, trembling himself. His face was completely open in a horror of concern, drained white, wide-eyed.

Lupin opened his eyes just a crack and looked at him blearily. "_I will be... Because you're looking at me like..._" He paused for a few breaths and weakly raised a hand to Sirius's face. "_You're our Padfoot..._" He leaned sideways with a trembling but wide smile and let his head rest against Sirius, who only stared and held him tightly.

"Let's get him downstairs, into bed," Molly said, rushing to stand over them.

Bill nodded. "Right. Here, let me take him..."

Sirius was clearly in no state to carry his friend, but only hesitantly let go. Molly waved her wand with the word _"Alligo"_ and conjured a bandage on Lupin's bleeding arm, and Bill started to lift him up.

"_Mmuh... my robe..._" Lupin breathed, reaching for it. Sirius picked it up and handed it to him, but rather than holding it, he struggled to place it around Sirius's shoulders, so persistently that he threatened to tumble out of Bill's arms at any attempt to carry him away. Sirius got the idea and shrugged the robe on, and Remus relaxed with an air of contentment as Bill took him and carried him down the stairs.

They brought him into the Blue Room, Molly running ahead and lifting back the covers of Bill's own old bed so that they could lay him down. Sirius clasped his hand and stroked his hair; Bill had pulled off his shoes and was just tucking the blankets up around him when Molly suddenly gasped.

"Wait! If Remus is here, then no one's on guard at the Ministry!"

Bill started; she was right! Lupin had recognised the signs they all had missed and rushed back in time to save Sirius---an incredible gift, but if his absence opened the way for something worse to happen...

"Don't worry."

Bill turned toward Sirius's suddenly-steady voice and found him drawing a fine necklace chain from under Lupin's shirt. He held up the attached pendant in his hand; it was a little golden hourglass---a Time Turner.

"Our Moony thought of that," Sirius said, with a smile of honest pride.

* * *

Remus slept through most of the next day, waking only in snatches---enough for Molly to feed him some bread and chicken soup, enough to see other people standing over his bed. Once it was Ron and Hermione, once it was Albus, but every time he could feel something warm and heavy laying curled against him, and he could look downward and see the dark shape that he knew was a great black dog.

The following morning, Molly's breakfast bell woke him painlessly, and he sat up, stretched, and let his feet down over the side to sit on the edge of the bed.

Presently Sirius came into the room with a breakfast tray, wearing Lupin's robe over a shirt and trousers presumably borrowed from someone. "Oh, no, you don't," he scolded, setting the tray aside on one of the dressing tables. "You, down." He took Remus by the shoulders and pushed him down in bed again.

"I'm feeling much better today," he argued.

"No no, you need to get your rest today, because you're not going to get any tonight," Sirius told him. "And you won't want to be upright when you hear about this one."

"What?"

"There were Dementors in Little Whinging last night," Sirius said. "They attacked Harry and his cousin."

Lupin gasped. "My goodness! Are they---?"

"No one was badly hurt. Dudley Dursley was worse for wear, but nothing a bit of chocolate won't cure, and Harry's fine. His health is fine at least; he was trying the Patronus Charm, and even though no Muggles would have seen it except his cousin, the Ministry's in a snit, wants to have him expelled. Albus had to go in there and throw his weight around to get a hearing."

Lupin sat up in bed again, against the headboard. He raised an eyebrow quizzically. "Who saw this happen? Is it possible they're just trumping something up?"

"Oh, there were really Dementors there, no doubt about that," Sirius said, fetching the breakfast tray and sitting down on the side of the bed. "Arabella saw them and drove them off. Pelted them with homemade biscuits, or so I hear."

That was Arabella for you, but a Dementor attack on Harry? _We all knew those things would throw in with Voldemort sooner or later..._

"As if that weren't enough," Sirius said, "Harry's uncle blamed him for what the Dementors did and nearly tossed him out on the street. Petunia put a stop to it. I was surprised; I wouldn't have given her that much credit. It certainly has thrown off Albus's figures as to how safe Harry is in that house, though."

"I should think so!"

"So, we're going to be casting the Fidelius Charm tonight," Sirius said, "and then you'll be leading a mission to go fetch Harry and bring him back here for the rest of the holiday." He offered a cup of tea with milk and sugar.

Remus sipped it, letting the news sink in, and then Sirius spoke again. "Of course we'll have to be a bit careful with the kids around the house, but we can put them up in here. I have been thinking I'll keep the master bedroom."

"Oh?"

"If I stopped staying there now, it would be because I was afraid to. I'm not about to let Mum scare me out."

Remus nodded. He imagined Arabella wouldn't have phrased it so bitingly, but she probably would say that it was better not to succumb to such fear. "That might be best, yes."

A slight pause. "Of course, what happened with Harry isn't the only thing the Ministry has to be in a snit about. Seems night-before-last some lunatic broke into the Archives," Sirius remarked with a knowing smile. "Near as they could tell, nothing had been touched except one newspaper laid out on a reading table and the hinges taken off one of the doors. Once the Aurors had the crime scene Remembered and gave the all-clear, it was good as new in five minutes."

"Hm."

"Now, what sort of fiend would go into a place that's open to the public and not damage anything there at all?" Sirius wondered. "Obviously Kingsley's up against a very sick, criminal mind with this one. Poor fellow." He shook his head and clucked his tongue, grinning broadly.

"It is a noble job he does, isn't it?" Lupin said.

"Yes but... Well, it's hardly my place to say and I do appreciate him finding some clothes to lend me, but..." At a gesture from Sirius, Lupin took closer notice of what he was wearing under the patched robe: trousers with green and black vertical stripes, like the robe Shacklebolt had worn at dinner, and a blue shirt with lavendar plaid. "He ought to be out chasing a nice girl, not me," Sirius said under his breath. "This man needs help."

Lupin couldn't help but laugh. "I'm glad the others have been able to find some things for you."

Sirius nodded. "Bill brought some shirts this morning, said he could lend me a few sweaters, although he couldn't give them away; Arabella sent a list of measurements so she could make some things... And I did talk to Kingsley about getting into my vault. He didn't think he'd have any trouble doing that, so we shouldn't have any worries about money for some time. Molly said she'd look for some robes she could cover up for with school shopping for the kids."

"Kingsley must have been surprised to meet you," Lupin supposed. "That is, finding out you're not at all the person from the night he came to dinner."

"He was a little," Sirius said, then paused. A thoughtful frown came over his face. "That all seems like such a bad dream... The very thought that I almost... Moony, I'm sorry. If you had---"

"It's finished with now," Lupin interrupted him. "I'd do it all again to have you back."

"That's what worries me about you," he said, then took a deep breath. "I keep thinking I should have known something was wrong, but I can't win that race. I've had to tell Molly a few dozen times that it's not her fault for pointing out what a git I was acting like and telling me to snap out of it, and after looking over that robe and not seeing anything wrong, Alastor's even further around the bend than usual, if you can imagine that. He and Bill spent some time yesterday taking the thing apart. Practically had to wrestle Kreacher for it---by the way, he's back to calling me '_Young_ Master,' and various other things that mustn't be repeated in mixed company.

"But near as they could tell, Dear Old Mummy enchanted it to react only to me. If I had run it through Alastor's whole gamut of tests myself, I could have detected it, but for anyone else, it would have been practically impossible. And of course, once I had it on, I couldn't properly think... I wouldn't have given Mum so much credit for subtlety, but apparently she realised it would put me onto her if I couldn't take the thing off when I wanted to. Thank heavens for that at least; that's the only reason you didn't have to..."

He trailed off and started again in another vein. "Even when I would take it off for awhile, everything it put in my head was still there, and I thought it had come from me. Trying to sort that out..." He shook his head. "I'd wind myself up so badly that it was more comfortable to put it on again, just to be closed-up and miserable and not fight it. If that was how Father felt all the time, I'm surprised it didn't get the best of him sooner."

Remus listened, sipping his tea and eating a slice of toast. "You're really not at all like him," he said.

"Although that reminds me..." Sirius said, more energy coming back into his voice. "I seem to remember you telling me about a dream you had, about the night I ran away from this house."

"Yes, I did..."

"I didn't think I'd ever talked about it to anyone but James, and yet the way you told me your dream is exactly the way I remember that night. Did I ever tell you about that, and then just forget?"

"If you did, I must have forgotten also," Remus said. "That it could just come to me in a dream seems impossible..."

"I mentioned it to Albus when he came to look in on you yesterday," Sirius said. "He said he had heard of such things happening before, very rarely, in cases where two people were very... 'psychically attuned' to each other...? He thought we should try playing at mind-reading like we used to do back in school, that with enough practice we might even be able to send messages to each other across distances."

Remus stared; Sirius looked at him sidelong and showed him a sly smile. "He's just being pragmatic, hoping someday the Order can use us for a wireless, you know. ...So what am I thinking right now?"

He closed his eyes and tried to find Sirius's voice in his mind. "You're thinking... That my talents for mischief are too good to let them go to waste as much as I do."

Sirius laughed. "I was thinking you should go back to sleep! But I _should_ have been thinking what you said."

Lupin smiled, a little embarassed. Perhaps he had found his own inner Padfoot-and-Prongs again rather than the real Padfoot here in front of him. "Maybe _I_ should have been thinking what _you_ said, just to keep anyone from getting us confused."

"Don't even say it! That was _much_ too good to go to waste."

Remus finished his tea and settled into bed again. Almost as soon as he closed his eyes, he heard that faint pop and felt Sirius as a dog curl up around his feet again. As he lay there, however, he found that he wasn't sleepy, so after awhile he drew his feet out from under Sirius slowly and carefully so as not to disturb him, got up, and walked barefoot across the blue-painted floor---they really should pour out the leftover paint sometime and track blue footprints around the house, he thought. After the previous day in bed, it felt good to get up and move, and the morning sun shone beautifully through the window. Turning, he noticed the parchment and ink from Albus laying on Bill's old writing desk next to Buckbeak's feather. He never had gotten around to writing the house-protection charms he'd planned on the first day they had come to the house.

_Better late than never..._ He sat down at the desk, carefully cut a nib on the feather, took a sheet of parchment and opened the ink-bottle, then brushed his lip with the feather-end of the quill, thinking of what to write. Even as he leaned back, he was at too extreme an angle to read Arabella's tile, but he knew what it said. Maybe with a slight correction...

_"Bless our Hearts, Bless this Home, Bless us All, Where'er we Roam."_

He wrote it in the iridescent green ink as many times as it would fit on a sheet of parchment, little by little, as his bandaged arm still ached. When he was finished, he carefully tore the parchment to bits, each copy of the verse on a separate scrap. He put one apiece in drawers of the writing desk and the two dressing tables, and started out to put more of them in other rooms, but as he opened the door and heard the warm, welcoming sound of the others moving around and talking in the near distance, a soft questioning whine called him back. The noise of the tearing paper and the drawers must have woken Sirius, who now looked up at him, perhaps reproachfully---of course, Sirius's dog form had the kind of face that always looked a bit reproachful in a kindly sort of way.

"Don't worry, Padfoot. I'm not going to overexert myself."

_POOF! POOF!_

Suddenly the Weasley Twins were standing in front of him. "What did you just say?" they asked in chorus.

"Oh, I was just talking to Sirius."

"But you didn't say 'Sirius'---" "You said . . ."

Remus blinked at them, then gave a nonchalant wave of his hand. "Oh, 'Padfoot.' Old school nickname..."

Sirius turned human again to sit on the bed. "Right. I'm Padfoot; he's Moony."

Fred and George's eyes grew very round. "And there wouldn't by any chance have been..." "...A Wormtail and a Prongs...?"

Remus looked past them to Sirius. "Only a guess, mind," he said, "but I think I know where Harry got our map."

"**_MAESTRO!_**"

Immediately the twins seized Remus from either side in a violent double-hug. As they dropped to one knee in unison and began theatrically kissing his hands, he looked up at Sirius in befuddlement. His friend returned him a laugh that twelve years of Azkaban had somehow failed to touch, and at that, Moony broke into a smile and let himself simply enjoy the attention.

Finite Narratium 

* * *

Author's Notes

As best I can recall, the curse of the robe was the original story idea around which "Hand-me-Downs" formed. By now, though, I've stared at the story so long I am utterly unable to grasp the mystery element; of course every clue I put in sticks right out at me, and it's gotten to the point that I can't imagine being just a reader anymore. I hadn't initially realised that the story would turn out so long---but then, the plot hinges on a character going through a strange-yet-believable psychological change, not exactly the kind of thing that can be brought off in ten pages. I did love being able to ramble and get so much in. I think a lot of the charm of the HP novels is that they're so packed with tidbits about the cast and setting (a "milieu-driven" element to the story), and I hope I partake in that charm a bit myself.

Although that does get into a "devil in the details": as mentioned at the outset, this is an A/U (I did my best to hold to canon through GoF, scavenged OotP for inspirations and choice bits, and haven't read HBP); I think most of the divergences are pretty self-explanatory, but they're also like a hundred little things scattered throughout. For one, I wrote my own rules about Remus's transformation---in canon it appears to be only one night, but for me that neither works like I want nor makes very much sense. Other things the canon had never been too clear on and I invented my own specifics, such as the working of the Wolfsbane Potion (I took it "letting Remus keep his mind" quite literally), and also the descriptions of Snuffles are based on my theory that he's a Newfoundland. What threatens to be more confusing are all the things taken from canon book 5 but altered---like Mrs. Black's this-time-much-more-personal vendetta. Actually, if I can get off my duff and get it written, this does continue into an alternate book 5 (with eventual musings for an alternate 6 and 7), which I mention here because, while the incident with the Dementors in Chapter 1 does stay, it didn't quite go the same---hence my heavily-retooled Arabella pelting the Dementors with homemade biscuits as referenced here.

And of course, the Sirius backstory dream sequence! It is one of my favorite parts; must say a bit about it. Taking and running with what we learned about his family in book 5, I tried to portray the young Sirius as both a courageous and even heroic survivor of this dysfunctional situation, and also a horrid little brat---because I think he truly was both. Abusive childhoods might be a bit cliche, but I think it works in his case, and I tried to portray it as unique and believable; Sirius's father, the one who actually hit him, was not evil or even malicious, just hellaciously messed up. I myself find what it was that set him off rather poignant and tragic, showing that he did love his son and just didn't know how to deal with him---as I facetiously summarize it, "How could you think that I would ever hurt you? _I'll beat you senseless if you say that!_" Also to note that while young Sirius was certainly not nice to the servants, he was the only member of the family who addressed them by name. (Frankly in the denoument of OotP, I don't know where Albus got off claiming Sirius just ignored Kreacher and didn't give him much thought; you read the same book I did, right? Sirius _hated_ that little monster, and who can really blame him? So the moral is, be nice to house-elves even if they want you dead, because racism is bad, but feel free to take the werewolf completely for granted.)

While I love the HP novels, I do love them in a somewhat critical way, and while I was mostly trying to make a story that was as good as I could make it on its own terms, there are elements of protest-fic here. I told you from the start that I was a book 5 atheist, and I set out to explore or treat more obviously things I've felt the books glossed over or winked at a bit too much. For example, all the trouble Remus had at the Ministry; the books portray the Wizard world and particularly the Ministry of Magic as Rock Stupid about such things, but in OotP, Remus's experience of this racism was boiled down to "can't get a job"---which I can't think begins to cover it. As a werewolf, you're seen as not quite human, and you're infectious (although you're not likely to just up and bite someone they still freak out)---you're not just unemployable, you're a _leper_, a pariah that no one wants to touch. (See also the little moment with Molly; I try to be fair to her, but she does sometimes represent conventional wisdom with all its blemishes, and even liking and respecting Remus, it's another thing again to have a werewolf _touch_ you---but she tries, as does Arthur, who got tongue-tied introducing Remus out of genuine desire to show kindness and respect.)

Also my treatment of Albus. I certainly didn't want to vilify him, but I did want to show him as human and capable of mistakes. This may almost seem out of character with the books, but to some extent I pin it on the viewpoint of my story here, too; sort of like "this is how Albus looks to an adult", albeit an adult who wishes Dumbledore was as perfect as he used to seem when they were young. Remus has rather hero-worshipped Dumbledore all his life, but as an adult comes to realise that the Headmaster doesn't necessarily know better than him, and that he has to think for himself and make his own decisions---with Sirius there as a healthy bad influence encouraging the revelation. I love Lupin, but he does desperately need a bad influence, and I have wished that canon would show more of his not-so-tamed side; "Moony wasn't _only_ the Marauders' conscience, you know."

More to the point of muddying up Dumbledore's character is the tension between him and Sirius and the issues underlying it. Did Dumbledore have the right to take Harry? Did he send Hagrid that night because Hagrid was the only one so blindly loyal as to take an orphaned baby away from their godparent? Why didn't he find out back then that Sirius was innocent?Frankly at this point I'm not so sure, Sirius is definitely not sure---and I don't think Albus is sure either. He has his issues with this regard which lead him to behave not villainously but not entirely nobly either, and he knows it. In that one scene in his office, Fawkes was playing the voice of his truer and better nature, but even for Albus, it's not so easy to follow his better nature always. That's perhaps a major plot thread in this story that's left unresolved, and it continues into the alternate book 5 (see above note re: my duff).

Something else I often don't find enough of in the books for my taste is _love_---not as in I want more 'shipping, but just beautifully mundane interpersonal warmth. The novels give lip service to love being the greatest magic, but the plot and the characters' day-to-day interactions don't always bear this out. Especially outside of Harry, Ron, and Hermione, at times the way the characters relate to each other seems almost to take on a sort of impersonal, almost gamishly pragmatic quality. In the canon, after their profound reunion and backstory dump, we really never saw Sirius and Remus display much emotion or attachment toward each other. When Sirius was reunited with Harry in GoF, he wagged his tail _once_, arguably about the food. I'm not saying that the characters should be constantly gushing with emotion or that the books turn them all into stone-hearted chessmen, but for a story purportedly about the power of love, I've always wanted to see more. Here, I've tried to suffuse my own 'fic with warmth, to portray the characters really in community with each other. (And at the extreme end, there's slash here for those who want it, although you don't have to take any if you don't care to. )

This is where the title of the story refers to such a crucial element, as the characters' constant support of each other through service and generosity weaves its own magic. Perhaps not as profound as "to lay down your life for a friend" (although that was in here too), but that sense of community, of mutual caring, giving of oneself in time and effort, consideration, happiness together, in a hundred little ways forms a powerful foundation of love, and I feel that those things too must touch that ultimate magic.

And maybe _that_ isn't just fiction.


End file.
